saiyed, michelle. a home on fire. 2019, acrylic and ink on fabric.
a home on fire expresses the anxiety brought upon by an undetermined and declining future. This piece was created at a time when both our created environment and the natural environment were erupting, one impacting the other, until it felt like both my home and the land it was made on were on fire. As humans spread across the globe, we created our own environment to live in through infrastructure and architecture. Now we live in societies where the natural world is designated to specific spaces, such as lawns and hiking trails. The segregation of these spaces created a fallacy of power and safety among human populations, leaving them unprepared to deal with the reality of how powerless one is against the greater forces that control their environments.