How a visual artist is saving the planet with her artworks

With the growing challenges associated with climate change, environmental protection has become an essential conversation.

Climate change affects humans and natural environments today and particularly in the future, consequently, advocacy on climate action has been heightened.

People have found innovative ways to visualize climate change and its associated effects in efforts to raise awareness. For painters and sculptors, they do this through their artworks.

In Ghana for instance, Christiana Enyonam Attippoe, also known as Christy Black, a young Ghanaian artist is striving to project the need for environmental protection with her artwork.

Dubbed “The Leftover Collection,” the assemblage is made of a variety of artwork named in accordance with the importance of recycling.

“So this one for instance is called ‘Shield’ and I got it from protection. When you recycle, it’s in order to protect the environment.

“Then I have riches – to save energy and save money. While we recycle we reuse, you save money so you get riches. The other one is called purity. Purity in the sense that if you’re not polluting the environment then you’re helping to purify it.

“Then I have energy as well. Recycling saves energy. It saves you time and a whole lot and I have one other one called unity. That one has a lot of colours together with the hard paint in it.

Unity in the sense that the topic or the conversation on green energy or recycling brings a lot of people together, it brings unity,” added.

Christiana is a contemporary artist with a Visual Arts background from Senior High School and has a degree in Marketing from University of Ghana.

She started drawing at her tender age and now has a wide range of paintings which is mainly inspired by nature and curiosity.

Her works are influenced by impressionism, fauvism and realism movement using acrylic paint. You can find her works in portrait, abstract domestic scenes and urban lifestyles.

Her unique works are appealing and memorable.

In two years of existence, Christy Black’s brand has been on shows and has won a recognition award at the Women in Entrepreneurship Awards 2022.

She hopes to inspire emerging artists around the world and also bring about socio-economic benefit to society through her artworks.

Speaking on her inspiration for the pieces she presented during the maiden edition of ‘Emerge’ (2022), she noted that “for this particular exhibition I chose my abstract pieces only and I call them the leftover collection.

“Leftover because from all the works I do I get leftover paints that are hard and I need to throw away but I was like if I’m not in any way helping to fight the pollution going on in the environment my work activities should not add to it so I decided to create something out of this,” she said.

Emerge is a collective setup for creative minds, collaborative efforts and shared space which is relentlessly engaging.

Aligned to this goal is the kind of space the Centre for National Culture, Accra and Gyandu Place offer for such possibilities.

The exhibition highlights the postures within a wide range of sensory experiences, experimentation of forms and subject matter.

The exhibition features ten young talented Ghanaian artists whose works represent Ghana’s cultural vernacular and the current transition of our artistic narrative that is making Ghana a force to reckon with.

The artists also employed varied expressions in different media which portrays the continuums and diversities within cultures.