Faculty of Design

Illustration

Geneviève Groulx

Insides Out

Anatomical landscape of human diseases in the anthropocene.

“Through my painting, I sought to represent semi-abstractly some human diseases and conditions that have flared up in populations throughout the world with the onset of climate change, namely trauma-responsive cognitive states in humans (illustrated by overly active neurons in the painting’s sky), lung tumours (made of silicone prosthetics in the mountain sides of painting), irritant skin conditions such as eczema and psoriasis with the onset of stress and environmental changes in air quality and temperature (shown in the crackle texture of the painting’s mountains), blood clots due to pollutants and poor diet (painted in the river in gelatinous fake blood), and pulmonary damage by pollutants (shown in the dried up root/bronchiole tree in the foreground of painting). Through these varied medium uses and methods, I sought to represent the different forms and textures of these unsettling symptoms, which represent the effects of the degradation of our external, natural environment that is reflected and felt in our internal, physiological environment.”