Lisa Crafts
4 Natures Mortes
2013, Digital Animation
Running time: 3:21 minutes
[AUDIO ON] The Age of Discovery was characterized by an explosive expansion of globalization and colonialism. It was the dawn of merchant capitalism and consumerist addiction. Before the merchant class began to prosper from global trade, Dutch still life paintings would often depict local bread, herring, cheese and beer. 17th century still life paintings depict seductive wonders brought back by European explorers, traders and exploiters at horrendous cost. These animated paintings draw a line from that moment to the environmental crisis of our time.
Lisa Crafts is an animator and moving image artist whose interdisciplinary work addresses issues of environmental uncertainty, sexuality, creativity and chaos. She is currently working on a series of short moving image pieces about the horror, beauty, humor and loss of the Anthropocene. Blending animation, video, photography, drawing, painting and sculpture, the work inhabits the blur between what is seen and what is imagined.