I guess I am a similar age to this artist, and her work and concerns really resonated as she spoke. A lot of her source material is familiar to me here in Europe, it also has parallels to my S. Asian heritage where similar things have in recent years just disappeared to be replaced with very soulless design. I also spent many years living by the Indian Ocean and so much of here concerns for the planet are very similar, having watched the changes from the fifties onwards. I do not make work anything like hers, which is why her objects really tug my heart, they are a play of things I found beautiful and today they are a lot more ephemeral than we dreamed back then and what we have now is not a patch on what we had then, environmentally or aesthetically. We did not as a species value it enough or ourselves. Now we have AI and I see artists and designers being even further marginalised, and think no, we must still continue to make, otherwise we will lose a vital part of our humanity as well as trust in our abilities. I. Fact I see for many people that process is already underway, they do not believe that people are able to create without dependence upon machines, or that lesser processes are somehow more, more interesting, and that manual work is valuable and essential to wellbeing. The balance has tipped into more and more people becoming obsolete! And why would we think Mars an answer when we are neglecting our own lovely world. What a wonderful artist to make us think more about this, and give us a means to do so.
