Last month I read an article about Bolsonaro in a Dutch magazine (Groene Amsterdammer). When I finished reading the article I strongly felt like I had to say something about this subject. And by saying I mean drawing, painting, and sculpting.
I’m trying to show the view of the loggers and entrepreneurs. They probrably see the untouched forest as a missed opportunity.
Progress and Prosperity (digital sketch 1) - 2019 - Jonat Deelstra
Gathering the information
First I needed to do some more research about the subject. While I’m trying to find articles and video’s I thought to myself: fuck, they are all choosing the same side. All Western media think it’s important to protect the pristine Amazon forests. When this subject is covered you see pictures of bad men with chainsaws and indigenous Amazon inhabitants struggling to survive. I do support those views myself. But I thought it might be interesting to depict this subject from the view of the entrepreneurs, loggers and plantation owners. How do they see this vast landscape? What do they see when they look at the Amazon forest, and how do they view their projects? The land their clearcutting is way more useful after they are done with it.
Progress and Prosperity (digital sketch 2) - 2019 - Jonat Deelstra
Political views on the environment
For now, I’m trying to read as many articles and seeing as much documentation as I can. I’m using video frames and pictures as a basis for digital sketches. I manipulate and color the images so a story can come forth. I never used this technique before but it means I have a great deal of control over the process. It’s also very important to organize my thoughts about this subject. That’s why I started this blog.
This is the first time my body of work is this… political. On the one hand, the subject is far away. On the other hand, it feels like my kind of fight. I’ve always been interested in the relationship between man and nature. The way humans want to structure and control everything. It seems like nature has to be useful and structured.
A lot of studies show that biodiversity and lushness are extremely important. Swiss scientists published an article in ‘Science’ about the effect of trees on global warming. They found that if we would start planting around one billion trees we can reduce the CO2 concentration by 25 percent.
Yet, it seems that that’s not the direction we're heading. The leaders of the countries that have space to execute that endeavor, don't have this issue on their agenda.
It doesn't seem like Bolsonaro, Putin and Trump will look at long term solutions(to a problem they don't think to exist in the first place) To them, nature needs to be of short term economical use, hence nature will be determined by grids and mono-usage. It’s a frightning sight to behold.
Progress and Prosperity (digital sketch 3) - 2019 - Jonat Deelstra
The people in the pictures need to be cooperating in the process, but also seem powerless to the bigger picture. As you can see the outer layer of the trees are dull and ‘worthless’ to the two loggers. The inside is what counts. It’s sellable. The thees are useful when they’re horizontal instead of vertical. Even though the trees provide a certain degree of wealth in the short term. The background is slowly disappearing. The canopy is balding and the lush forest is shrinking to a shadow of what it used to be.
It’s this short term mentality that put Bolsonaro in the president’s seat in the first place, and what will have a devastating effect on the Amazon Basin. How much effect the new logging regulations and mining endeavors will have is a question only time can answer, I guess.
Progress and Prosperity (digital sketch 4) - 2019 - Jonat Deelstra
More work soon…
sources:
https://www.groene.nl/artikel/de-witte-man-op-rooftocht
https://www.groene.nl/artikel/kop-op