Power to create change
By Catherine Sarah Young

'My Own Words' is a monthly series which features personal essays by practitioners in the Southeast Asian art community. They deliberate on their locality's present circumstances, articulating observations and challenges in their respective roles.

As an artist, it is impossible to decouple my practice from the planetary crisis of climate change and its entanglements. My experiences living around the world thanks to residencies and fellowships have allowed not just a knowledge exchange with local communities but also a personal immersion into the diversity of climate impacts. I firmly believe that the years ahead of us are years of repair for the catastrophes that we have wrought, from fossil fuel emissions that lead to the climate emergency, to habitat destruction that leads to disease, to rising inequality worldwide that leads to social unrest. I believe that the arts—and all other fields—have a critical role to play in planetary repair. We need all hands on deck to save us from ourselves.

As an artist, I like working with what I can gather. This could mean the physical material I acquire, such as bushfire ash in Australia or raw sewage in the Philippines, or stories I collect, such as the memories of scents of the Amazon or thoughts of climate change deniers directed at me. From these concrete and abstract materials, I work out why these are important and how we might care about them even though we tend to overlook these materials in the busyness of our lives. The general sense of overwhelm that we feel living in the tumultuous times of 2022 can make the world seem like a tangled ball of yarn, and as an artist I like to help to detangle this by taking a thread and pulling it out of the snarl so that we can see a story coming out of it.

Catherine Sarah Young, ‘The Sewer Soaperie’, 2016, palm oil, raw sewage, sodium hydroxide, dimensions variable. Image courtesy of Studio Catherine Sarah Young.

Catherine Sarah Young, ‘The Sewer Soaperie’, 2016, palm oil, raw sewage, sodium hydroxide, dimensions variable. Image courtesy of 1335MABINI.

Catherine Sarah Young, ‘The Ephemeral Marvels Perfume Store’, 2014, custom scents and glass bottles, dimensions variable. Image courtesy of Studio Catherine Sarah Young.

I like the idea of "the double-take"— how can I get people to pay attention to these issues that they might be numb to because we see them everyday? For example, in making soap out of sewage in ‘The Sewer Soaperie’, we initially just see soaps. But upon closer inspection, people realise that they are made from sewage. This distresses some people, and then we have the emotional hook. Or for ‘The Ephemeral Marvels Perfume Store’, one might just smell perfumes, but when they know that these scents will be lost because of the climate crisis, then they find another, more meaningful layer for the work. Maybe the person goes out into the world and starts connecting other scents with his memories that he may lose. This layering of meaning as well as potential for behavioural change is where the power of art is. It is our common humanity that I am hoping to reach, and so I strive to create inclusive spaces through which we can engage with these topics that are often difficult to grasp and may be even more challenging to discuss with our communities.

The materials I work with are outputs of the systems I aim to critique. They are of the planet that we live in and serve as parts of the planetary system. For example, bushfire ash is a recurring resource I have because of the climate emergency. They are imperfectly combusted portions of the critical zone on Earth. In ‘The Weighing of the Heart’, I cast these ashes into human heart sculptures to make a permanent visual register of the catastrophe, which is often forgotten soon after it takes place. In ‘Arctic Ice Chess’, I used ice to create the chess pieces and use the melting of these pieces to drive the story. Here, the ice melts to reveal toy soldiers painted with the flags of the countries that have a political stake in the Arctic and its petroleum deposits, as well as countries that are experiencing a rise in sea levels. This illustrates the players and the critical role of human behaviour in the system, which is embodied in the act of playing the chess game, the melting that occurs due to body heat, and heat from the players' discussion on Arctic issues. The artworks tend to be dynamic and participatory, through a game or workshop the viewers talk about the issues that my artworks are about.

Catherine Sarah Young, ‘The Weighing of the Heart’, 2021, ashes from the Australian bushfires, approximately 11 x 8 x 9cm (each). Image courtesy of the Cultural Centre of the Philippines Visual Arts and Museum Division.

Catherine Sarah Young, ‘The Weighing of the Heart’ (installation view), 2021, ashes from the Australian bushfires, approximately 11 x 8 x 9cm (each). Image courtesy of the Cultural Centre of the Philippines Visual Arts and Museum Division.

Catherine Sarah Young, ‘Artic Ice Chess’, 2021, mixed media, 76.2 x 76.2cm. Image courtesy of Malou Solfjeld and SixtyEight Art Institute Copenhagen.

Catherine Sarah Young, ‘Artic Ice Chess’, 2021, mixed media, 76.2 x 76.2cm. Image courtesy of Studio Catherine Sarah Young.

The threats that we sense, from climate catastrophe to pandemic to war, may make us more insular and frightened of “the other”. I think that letting these threats further divide us is the greater danger. The arts have an advantage of creating inclusive spaces that make us engage with people from different backgrounds. I chose to be an artist because I can mingle with anyone, of all types of privilege, race, culture, etc. This has given me an enriched life where I feel empowered to be part of the solutions to global crises and to hopefully inspire people to do the same.

“The threats that we sense, from climate catastrophe to pandemic to war, may make us more insular and frightened of “the other”. I think that letting these threats further divide us is the greater danger. The arts have an advantage of creating inclusive spaces that make us engage with people from different backgrounds. I chose to be an artist because I can mingle with anyone, of all types of privilege, race, culture, etc. This has given me an enriched life where I feel empowered to be part of the solutions to global crises and to hopefully inspire people to do the same.”

It is incredible what we can do if we choose to repair our relationships with ourselves, with each other, and with the planet. Even in the art world, we have adapted in various ways to keep making art and to sustain our communities. We need everyone to help unravel the tangled ball of yarn, and with the strings that we pull out, to weave together a collective tapestry of our futures.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect those of A&M.

Click here to watch Catherine in conversation with A&M Content Producer Vivyan Yeo, as part of our annual conference LANDING.

This essay was first published in CHECK-IN 2022, A&M’s second annual publication. Click here to read the digital copy in full, or to purchase a copy of the limited print edition.

Read all My Own Words essays here.