“The Water Will Come” by Xavier Cortada

Palette Project: Artist’s Statement | Invitation

Xavier Cortada. “The Water Will Come,” ceramic on varnished wood palette, 12″ x 16″. 2018.

ARTIST’S STATEMENT

The Water Will Come
by Xavier Cortada

The palette wasn’t made for painters. It was made for their thumbs.

Evolutionarily speaking, this digit matters more than the other four in a human hand. The prehensile thumb’s role in shaping the human brain should relegate it to a higher status than the one it is subjected to as it is shoved into a palette’s hole. The opposable thumb helped our species develop more refined motor skills, build tools. We used it to develop the brains we have. Sure other animals (including our evolutionary ancestors) shared this anatomical feature, but unlike any other, our species took this and ran with it.

Our brains did brilliant things: We created language, myths, medicine. Yes, because we had that thumb, our brains were able to have us learn how to make fire, weapons and wheels – and even the palettes used to mix paint and create works of art. That opposable thumb allowed us to think and communicate abstract thoughts. We developed Culture. Society. Civilization.

But that thumb also gave us the capacity to build machines to drain wetlands and transform life-giving wilderness into concrete jungles. It rerouted waterways and transformed forests into farmland to feed more humans than the planet could naturally handle. That human brain rationalized its actions and propelled us further down a dangerous path that disconnected us from the natural world.  And now we are here, with our thumbs up our palettes, staring at the failing landscape that we created in our own image: Global Climate Change and Sea Level Rise…

As Earth’s ecosystems collapse—and as their ability to clean the pollution our machines thrust into the atmosphere further diminishes— our planet will trap more heat. In response, the global climate will continue to change. Rapidly. So, Earth’s glaciers will melt. Its seas will rise. Our concrete jungles will flood, as will the fields where we have planted our monoculture crops. The saltwater will rise through holes in the limestone rock beneath our feet, poisoning our drinking water. ‘

And it will continue rising… Pushing up against the hole of our palette, forcing our hand.

Unable to stop it, our thumb will give way and the water will gush in and wash all the paint away.

It will wash away the Culture. The Society. The Civilization.

The Water will come and it will wash away all our evolved brains worked so hard to build.