The work you see here represents a holistic perspective. The prevailing patriarchal, capitalist perspective values domination, subjugation, and unmitigated advancement of the One at the expense of the Whole.
A more realistic perspective acknowledges that we are part of the whole, and that each part depends on each other part to survive and to thrive. This is true in regard to smaller institutions, all the way up to societies, and global governments. Likewise it’s true from the smallest ecosystems to the Earth as a whole. This is emphasized in Buddhist philosophy as anatta, No Inherent Self that arises separately from others.
Unlimited growth is an aberration in nature which balances itself out through the eventual starvation of the population that has grown too large for its resources. Unfortunately, unlimited growth is the model on which our society now runs, satisfying the desires of the boards of investors, or individual billionaires, instead of looking realistically at what the Earth can provide in terms of actual resources.
But we cannot outrun reality.
And besides, the reality is a much more joyful state of being, feeling connection rather than isolation!
Through the visual language of stacking figures together, without strict adherence to gravity or scale, these are a playful and joyful antidote to the constricting emotions of greed and selfishness, showing that all individual beings are necessary for all to rise.
As in the powerful practice of meditating on the elements, figures merge with their surroundings, conveying the actual experience of disappearing into the whole—understanding that your solid bits come from the earth and return to it, that water comes into you and leaves you back into the water cycle, air enters you and leaves you—you are made of all these parts that are actually still part of the whole. There is never actually a separate you.
Instead of this realization causing fear of loss of self, it nurtures compassion for all the other parts in this dance of life. We must care for the water, because it is Us. We must care for the plankton that oxygenate the water, because they are also Us. We Are All One.