Camila Isabelle Young

The city climbs into its hubris. 

Its inhabitants, drunk on the views, reveling in their creation. 

They recline in the coolness of their towers, giddy to keep the heat outside. 

They confuse the beating sun as attribution to their glory, for they know how to manage.

They speak of domination. 

Absorbed in themselves, their tongues lick inwards. 

Language is no longer an act of connection, but a grasp for control.

Speak to hear themselves, to savor the melody of genius.

They develop an interior tongue. 

Intentions trapped in their skulls, circling, crashing, collapsing. 

They look at their neighbor: a point of comparison, a subject of conquest.

They forget what it is like to speak for the sake of connection. 

Caged in their flesh.

She foretells the oncoming storms.

She whistles in the winds as they become stronger, 

and she nudges with the swells that turn acidic. 

But their ears are turned inward, 

listening to their internal tongues.

She bows to their deafness, 

taking to her mantle of sacrifice.

They see her submission and choose to build upon her. 

Vanity compels them to ravage her.

And when the waves come, 

when the city topples, 

their cries fall on turned ears.

And She? 

She maintains her genuflection, 

ready to give them her body for when they build again.

Waters fall over her lips, 

but it doesn't matter,

since she chose silence long ago.

Babel was painted in a creative rage as I just walked out of an argument in which I felt words were not enough to reach the love necessary to come to an agreement. The waters depicted are a nod to the flooding inflicted on Puerto Rico resulting from hurricane Maria. It recalls the deaf ears turned to the islanders when they asked for more help from the mainland US. 

The accompanying poem was written whilst at a Spanish artist residency, after I heard the oral testimony of the Galician people who were stripped of the weight of their words. The Altri factory threatens to be built on their river; the waters would likely be tainted regardless of their protests. To be silenced and sacrificed due to the futility of words is not unique. 'She' in the painting is the people who have bowed to destruction of their home, 'She' is the nature who lets her land be conquered, 'She' is the hope that her giving will be met with humility, 'She' is the sacrifice needed to communicate clearly. 

A true exchange of thought demands vulnerability. It demands being open to being interpreted: the other has the power of being the interpreter. So She'll bow, in acknowledgement that to be heard is to be vulnerable.

Babel is being exhibited at the World Food Forum flagship event, "By uniting diverse voices and fostering cross-sectoral and intergenerational collaboration, [the World Food Forum flagship event] accelerates progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals, driving action at global, regional and local levels."  I will be the keynote artist speaker presenting why the arts is a necessary form of conversation to advance global environmental cooperation.

The Audobon Climate report finds that 314 North American bird species are under serious threat due to climate change. Of these species, the climate-endangered group faces a reduction of 50% of its current range by 2050, and the climate-threatened group is projected to meet the same fate by 2080. 

In Nature's Keeper, the bird featured embodies the climate-endangered group: a stylistic blend of the Pine Warbler, Palm Warbler, Sage Sparrow, Rufous Hummingbird, and Varied Thrush. 

Humanity ignites fire to the bird in a candle-like flame meanwhile attempting to extinguish her fire; take care to notice the blue drip coming from her right arm. 

Is she turned away in negligence of her hands? Is this a transitional turn, in an attempt to correct her inferno? Can her stance be instead read as a gentle beholding? 

Have you, yourself, succumbed to pyromania? 

Fire is powerful, yet delicate. Without fuel, it ceases to exist. Its source goes up in smoke.

The woman in this piece is delicate, yet powerful. Her strength comes from an eternal source, that which precedes her and surpasses her. She is all possibility and past. However, she may only sustaine once she relinquishes her fire.

When physicists try to map out a three body celestial orbit, it appears nondeterministic, chaotic. The slightest deviation in the initial position wildly shifts the system's behavior. In other words, it is the butterfly effect.

In Taoism, the self is a reflection of the cosmos----the cosmos is a reflection of the self. To understand the world is to understand how you effect it, to come to know relationships and causality. 

Blindness is believing your actions, your mental state, your consciousness has no ripple, no gravity. 

We live in a global world, one in which the migration of ideas, beauty, mindset, culture, destruction, poison, hope is inevitable. The peacock, for instance, is native to Sri Lanka and India, yet they now thrive in my home neighborhood in South Florida. He is just one symbol of this constant border crossing, this interconnected globalism.

Your starting point matters, since you don't know how far reaching your end will be. 

Your reaction to climate change is not done in vain. Living in the delusion that what you do does not matter in the grand scheme of the climate crisis only adds to your destructive ability. 

Know your power, act as though you live in a three body world. 

Even further, understand the other bodies in the system.

The sun is generally drawn in red in Japanese art, yet in the US, we artists are taught to paint it in yellow. Your culture crafts the eyes in which your world is illuminated. How can you add dimension to your view? How may you acknowledge someone else's luminosity to make your own reflective potential more vibrant, more knowledgable? 

Must you rework your view of the world? Of the environment?

A memory of the my younger self looks at her older self. A cardinal flits through her hair, and an owl looks past the child. 

Reflection of the past serves as a mode to hop between mental states. Allowing fluidy and whimsy into life is an acknowledgement of youth. It is also an invitation to the future. 

A crane finds its reflection of the present moment in the ripples it creates. The force it puts out changes its medium of study. 

With water, reflection is constrained to the present reality----and it is subject to the impulse of surroundings. 

An orchid crawls up the periphery of the baby. Its inclusion is an ode to my grandmother. My grandmother studied botany before shifting her life to account for the demands of a marriage. Her gardens are filled with orchids, upholding the legacy of flowers in the family.

The Whooping Crane featured here is native to my home in South Florida. They rely on freshwater marshes and floodplain habitats, both of which are at risk of drought and salination due to the changes in temperature and rising seas involved with climate change. 

She has submitted herself to becoming a ground for this bird, his foundation. Her composure is calm, meditative, accepting, as she takes up her mantle. 

Love is a display of modesty, of vulnerability. 

Can she kneel in the face of a calling? To replace quick satisfaction with longsighted meditation. 

This piece is temporality. Who comes first? 

How does power position itself?

A white ibis dips her head into the bay. A lotus emerges from the mud at her feet. 

I sat in mangroves, in the mud, watching ibises pass in front of me. They sifted through the water, looking for food in the muds. I took inspiration from my sit. The yellow lotus, native to Florida, is a recall to my childhood ventures in the gardens near my home. 

Here, the woman is the watcher, the beholder, the noticer. 

The creation of this piece was a sequence of waiting, seeing, and adding. Before the waters dried, I timed when to add more color. I played with opacity at each drying phase.

A transplanted flower will only ever have the chance to grow if its roots are transplanted with it. The roots should be allowed to thread into the new soil, grow into the new landscape---adding to the depths of diverse color and beauty. 

There is a reason the painted flower's dress is the same color as blood. 

There is a reason I painted this in 2025, in Miami, a city of migrants. A city where there is a concentration camp being built in the everglades for plucked migrants.

There is a reason this painting came about conjointly with my research about climate migration. A phenomenon of mass human displacement caused by the earth's intensifying natural conditions. 

May we find a way to honor roots? A way to celebrate the interlocking of backgrounds and paths. May we get to a point where we create fertile soil so that we may all be rooted?

A flame is restless, fleeting, fueled by insatiability. Such is our treatment of the environment, but such behavior cannot sustain. 

When will we be forced into a period of ash? 

Will we be in charge of the timing of our rest, or will our turning dust be a consequence of our negligence?

War and Peace are product of experimental destruction and stillness. 

To grasp destruction is to also hold peace. 

I left War in the beats of rain. 

I left Peace in the notes quiet.

Made with music, each color is a shift in melody. 

Nature's pulse is a song. Her vibrance is the battle towards peace. Man's hand holds a cycle of abuse.

Drums were used in war. 

Silence in peace's equilibrium.

War and Peace were made in front of a live audience of 100+ students as a collaboration with singer-songwriter Zaida Rio. 

While Rio debuted her song 'Slow Violence,' I painted these, asking for a woman from the audience to model 'grasping'. The joint performance was a commentary on the cyclical nature of abuse when in pursuit of 'wanting more'. The feminized recipient of abuse is victim to the tides of control but she's quiet in its wake. Is nature She who is quiet?

After the performance, I left Peace in a dry, silent room, lines and colors stayed crisp. Meanwhile, War was left in the drumming of the rain, leading to the bleeding of colors and lines.