When I built this diorama, the topic of the Climate Crisis was big on people's minds. It was the summer of 2023, and unprecedented forest fires were raging across the province for another consecutive year.
I felt that I needed to say something, and the diorama I ended up building was as much an expression of frustration as it was a snapshot of the fires. I placed the fire next to a highway to highlight the juxtaposition between the forest fire with fleeing animals and the cars on the highway which are such a big cause of climate change. The title is intended to be ironic.
With this diorama, I was going for a post-apocalyptic scene with an overgrown gas station, tall trees, and other broken-down relics of our modern world (car, fence, dumpster, pumps, gas station supplies etc.). The gas station represents some of the problems of our world, like climate change, capitalism, and consumerism. I hope it shows the un-sustainability of our system, by building the gas station overgrown.
I also, however, have included an element of survival and regrowth. There is a miniature camp of apocalypse survivors, which shows that life goes on even after a disaster. The camp includes a garden bed, swings for kids, and a tree house, which act as wholesome symbols of what a simpler or healthier society could look like!
Look How Far We've Come (December 2022)
One of the main themes of this diorama is the negative effects of cellphones in society and the resulting disconnectedness with the world around us. The old buildings could bring about thoughts of a simpler time, as well as being beautiful human creations despite their run-down state.
In large cities, nature can often be lacking, but the empty lot with the tree shows that nature still manages to exist in a harsh environment. In this scene, the people aren't paying any thought to what is around them, including the buildings and the tree and each other. They are oblivious to the struggles going on in the city, and caught up in a blinding digital world.
When I came up with this idea, I wanted to do a statement on capitalism. I was looking out my window at some flying birds, and thinking how fun it would be to model something with nature or animals in it taking a stand against our human institutions. The idea of birds lifting up a bank and letting all the money spill out onto the ground came to my mind.
In some surrealist world, the birds have decided they are fed up with our capitalist system and, taking matters into their own hands (or beaks and claws), they rip this bank out of the ground and leave the money exposed to the public. I included a startled man with a shopping cart, grocery shopping, possibly to connect it to our current economic inequities and the high cost of living.
I hope this diorama might make people stop and think for a minute, because of how strange and absurd it looks. I hope that for some people it could bring up a refreshing feeling to see nature fighting back in this way!
When I built this diorama, I had just done a research essay about the Genocide in Gaza for a school social studies assignment. I felt that after all the research and my own learning at home about the topic, the least I could do would be to use the skills that I have for building dioramas to honour and illustrate the experience of Palestinians and the resilience they have.
I tried to honour what this house might have once looked like. The furniture that filled the rooms before, and lives of the people who lived there. I also wanted to show hope, because even despite massive destruction, someone has put up a makeshift clothesline on the roof and people are still living and surviving with resilience.
As soon as I decided to research the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I knew I wanted to make a diorama of one of the cities before the atomic bomb. Humans have a tendency, when looking at a very awful thing, to feel desensitized and distanced from it without truly feeling the weight of the tragedy.
With this diorama I attempted to remove the degree of separation by displaying the people who walked the streets of Hiroshima before it was destroyed. When someone first looks at my diorama, they might just see it as an interesting city without realizing what it is. Maybe they would admire the figures on the street. Then reading the caption they would discover that probably every one of those people died horrifically.
This diorama focuses on the idea of childhood and play. I wanted to explore one aspect of play for current day children and how some of this play that once was so commonplace (such as playing with others on a playground) has been diminished by our digital world.
I painted a group of scale children (in black and white like an old photograph) playing on this old playground. Maybe they were once on this playground but are not anymore. The modern-day kid is looking at this playground, curious, but his parents are on their phones. The topic is serious, but there is also plenty of hope. There are still so many kids who just want to be kids and love playgrounds.