Ocean Mission: Artists highlight threat of climate change

Artists in the Seychelles are highlighting the risks of climate change through their works on display across the island nation. The Seychelles is already feeling the effects of climate change, with rising water temperatures bleaching its coral reefs.

Mahe (Seychelles): Artists in the Seychelles are highlighting the risks of climate change through their works on display across the island nation. The Seychelles is already feeling the effects of climate change, with rising water temperatures bleaching its coral reefs.

On a busy Seychelles road, a bustling coral reef ... a mural of one, at least.

Stretching 16 metres across a secondary school wall, this colourful mural is reminding locals of what they have, and also of what's at stake.

The sprawling painting, designed by Seychellois artist George Camille and painted with the help of local school children, features shoals of fish, corals, even a turtle.

It took about a week to paint, over 20 volunteers used an estimated 24 litres of blue paint.

It's all part of an art project - called UP! Seychelles - that aims to highlight the island nation's fragile environment and the need for conservation.

The Seychelles' 115 islands together add up to just 455 square kilometres (176 square miles) of land - about the same as San Antonio, Texas.

But its exclusive economic zone stretches to 1.4 million square kilometers (540 million square miles) of sea, an area almost the size of Alaska.

The island nation of fewer than 100,000 people is already feeling the effects of climate change, with rising water temperatures bleaching its coral reefs.

Camille, who'll be representing the Seychelles at the upcoming Venice Biennale, says he wanted to remind passersby about their own environmental impact.

"The idea was to show how a healthy reef should look like and then see it abundant with fish and coral," he says.

"So, at least they'll see it on the wall there and they'll think; 'Everything I throw away, whether it's up the mountain, it ends up in the ocean and it ends up on the reef.'

"It's not enough producing art that's hanged in galleries or bought by tourists and then they put it in their suitcase, and then they leave.

"I think artists have a role to play, a very important role, and a responsibility to help the collective voice, which is putting across the messages to the population, especially the young, you have to listen to these messages, they're real. And putting it in a visual way, for me, it's very important."

Across the island of Mahe, artist Charles Dodo's "Birds Crying Out" installation is shining in the sun.

The towering artwork takes the form of two grey heron birds, commonly found on Seychelles shorelines, they're made from recycled aluminium plates and plastic objects, mounted on steel bars and surrounded by discarded materials collected on the island.

It took Dodo about six weeks to build.

After monitoring the birds' lifestyle, Dodo says he noticed an abundance of plastic waste washing through their coastal habitat. A plastic bucket is wrapped round one of the herons' beaks.

"My message is simply, think twice," says Dodo.

"And, you know those birds, they deserve to live fully, just like you get your prey, like they get their prey, when they come there, they eat their fish, not the plastic, not a bucket block (on) the beak.

"Art can pass on millions of messages, but if the person who takes it, he's not interested, so it's a problem. But I strongly believe that through art, we go very far."

Another installation, by Seychellois artist Jude Ally, hangs above visitors to a bus terminal in the country's capital, Victoria.

Named "Don't let the Earth wear plastics" and made using plastic packaging collected in the local area, it takes the shape of clothes hanging from a washing line.

"We wanted to use the art to be (an) emotional instrument, to really reach the deep inside of a human being because we got those cold scientific data, methodology that are we going to solve the problem," says Shirley Yu, a Seychelles Art Foundation project manager.

"But how deep you can reach to everyone and how much you can really change a small movement of everyday small decisions?"

The UP! Seychelles project includes five different artworks. There are plans to install further climate-inspired works across the island nation.

This month the ambitious Nekton "First Descent" Indian Ocean mission will start surveying underwater life, plus map the sea floor and drop sensors to depths of up to 2,000 meters in the seas around the Seychelles, in part to monitor the impact of climate change.

The mission will conclude with the State of the Indian Ocean Summit in 2022.

(With inputs from APTN)