When creating the series of Gaia Rise, I sought for the connection with one of the earliest and most universal deities of ancient myth is the personification of Earth: Gaia, who’s equivalents in Earth goddess have been relevant in Asia, India, or South American cultures like the Aztecs. However, Herodot describes Gaia not only as a caring or nurturing mother, but also as volatile and erratic in nature. This insight motivated me to think about our present condition on Earth and how much our lifestyle has contributed to the exhaust and extortion of natural resources and ongoing extinction of species, languages, cultures and ethnicities. Those myths set exemplary narratives we need to remember as a call for change for a paradigm shift away from economies towards ecologies.
Each piece of the cycle depicts distinct mythological themes animated by Mother Earth’s close and far relatives, which have formed the base of Western culture updating these classics into cautionary tales.
Mythological themes are montaged into a tapestry of devastated, neglected or exploited landscapes. Gaia Rise retells the myths of Mnemosyne, Perseus, Medusa, or Prometheus, which have formed the base of Western culture updating these classics into cautionary tales. I have reinterpreted ‘Gaia’ into extended versions, in order to explore the political violence embedded into motifs of landscapes in volatile conditions that have expanded globally. I explore how Gaia is vulnerable and completely out of balance along with all atmospheric formations of climate change as an outrageous result of human activity. 
Through the use of corrugated cardboard, the ubiquitous signature of our globalized consumerism, I process mixed media, natural and anthropogenic material and matter into multilayered paintings. Through disappearance and disintegration principles, I share underlying tales of ancient myths of powers and forces transforming the planet. I apply painterly gestures and join abrasive operations, destruction, disintegration, and reconstruction of tattered textures. I shred crusted layers of mixed media incorporated with found object and materials from corrugated cardboard, forming the delicate, vulnerable spheres that we occupy.The process reflects exactly on human-kind’s capacity of building, unbuilding and destruction. I build up layers of corrugated cardboard, just with the purpose to destroy again. As Mark Jenkins of the Washington Post once pointed out being a "builder and destroyer."
Favorite tools: worn out mops, giant spatulas, and buckets of water. Those tools support the concept of erraticism, erosion, and raptures in our doing, the intended unintentional, the speculated unforeseen.


GAIA RISE CYCLE

Series of Gaia Rise

Acrylic and mixed media; molded hand in-prints, gold embellished, incorporated into multilayered corrugated cardboard and FedEx packing paper

90x100x3”

October 2019

The Perseids

Series of Gaia Rise

Acrylic and mixed media (dust, plaster), assemblage of layered corrugated cardboard,

90x90x5”

January 2020

Prometheus

Series of Gaia Rise

Acrylic and mixed media; commercial cleaning mop heads, incorporated into multilayered corrugated cardboard

90x100x10”

September 2019

Rape of Medusa

Series of Gaia Rise

Mixed media (acrylic, coal pigments, shellac, honeycomb, packing paper) on corrugated cardboard, glued together and partially hammered out digging holes into the accumulated material, washed paint, filled coal pigments, continuous collaging/de-collaging, disintegration and reconstruction  

90x100x3”

October 2019

Melancholia

Series of Gaia Rise, acrylic and mixed media on corrugated cardboard, layers of wrung out sheet of packing paper, found vine orb on corrugated cardboard

90x120x10”

January 2020

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Artemis Herber