‘Our planet is a giant crime scene and we are all implicated’: Fawn Rogers’ seductive paintings of oysters and pearls use eroticism and ecocriticism to highlight our exploitation of our environment.
Agent of protection, impresa of fertility and gastronomic delight of aphrodisia … Oysters aren’t short of symbolic virtues. Unfortunately, figurative lore holds little sway against the damning impacts of human activity on marine ecosystems. Due to overfishing from bottom trawling, the population of oysters has dropped by 85 per cent over the past century and today the species teeters on the brink of extinction.
In Fawn Rogers’ larger-than-life series of sea personalities, these clammy curiosities are imbued with new meaning. Yoking vital themes of extinction, eroticism and ecofeminism, her paintings are an urgent reminder of climate and human rights emergencies and an eloquent testimony to the reality of life that operates beyond our possession.
“Oysters are both very fragile and highly sensual,” Rogers tells Dazed. “It’s so easy to forget about other lifeforms – like the little spider in your shower that you think about killing, but it wants to live as much as you do. With these paintings, I’m trying to place the human in patchworks of vibrant ecologies. I want to feel the delicacy and complexity of the tangled tension and vulnerable webs of life that surround us.”
On a larger scale, Rogers explores the profound conflicts between human nature and the natural world to critique power as the currency of the Anthropocene. In “Poisonous Harmony” figures commingle with raw, natural forms such as shells and fungi, the evocative title an allusion to the part we all play in this messy state of existence.
She continues: “For me, my work is liberatory. It makes me aware of the powers that emerge between people and the world’s ecosystems. I am interested in a future evolution of humanity with empathy, less repression and destruction.”
Photographic contributions to the series of the artist in her studio atop a dappled horse allude, for the first time, to Rogers’ Cherokee heritage and her ancestors’ violent removal from the unbuilt world. The artist responds to how climate change exacerbates the difficulties already faced by indigenous communities with abrupt beauty where the oyster – harvested in her forbearers’ native Oregon coast – is evocative of all life, it’s oozing assurance a mockery of human morality.
Fawn Rogers’ Boil, Toil & Trouble will be shown as part of the Expo Chicago from April 13 until 16 2023.
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