This sculpture was inspired by my itinerant research into African communities affected by climate change (click here to know more).

In the south of Malawi, in the Mulanje mountain range, communities live from agriculture and tea production. Some of the population are very poor and have no land on which to grow crops, so they cut down trees illegally to produce charcoal for resale. To produce this resource, which everyone uses for cooking, they dig a hole in the forest and slowly burn the wood for 24 to 48 hours. This illegal logging has decimated the forests of the mountain range, in addition to causing uncontrolled forest fires. These phenomena cause erosion of the mountains, generating floods that are all the more violent at a time when climate change is amplifying the heavy rains and cyclones in this region.

I wanted to represent these stories of life by means of a cut tree trunk (with the mark of the cut visible). The trunk is hollowed out, in the same way that coal is dug out of the ground. Cracks are visible around the trunk, symbolising erosion. The faces of figures representing the community are carved in white alabaster stone. They are close together, talking and trying to come up with solutions to this problem. The illegal tree-cutters, on the other hand, are sculpted from burnt trunks.

50cm diameter, 50cm high
Alder wood, alabaster bench