As though the setting sun dances its final spectacle before retiring behind the silvery horizon, the sunset on the coastline of San Remigio, my mother’s hometown, is always a glorious sight, always golden, always heart-warming. The display of colors affects an aesthetic experience, one that many artists strive to produce in their works, that feeling of awe and wonder at the sight of beautiful art. In nature, like the phenomenon of the sunset or the majestic view of the towering mountains, artists found lasting inspiration and material sources for their works. They tried to capture the effects of nature on their canvases and mastered the techniques of naturalism as though art has become a game of illusionism. For this reason, Art imitates nature yet art also reveals and oftentimes attempts to bridge the distance between humans and the natural world. Henry Matisse advises: “An artist must possess Nature. He must identify himself with her rhythm, by efforts that will prepare the mastery which will later enable him to express himself in his own language.”

Philosopher Edmund Burke categorizes “objects of experience” into the aesthetic notions of the beautiful and the sublime, how objects, natural and man-made affect the senses. The attributes of “balance,” “smoothness,” “delicacy” and “color” are attributes of the beautiful, while the sublime relates to terror, overwhelming loftiness, or vastness (Burke 1757). In this sense, when nature is apprehended in art, it does not have to produce the same aesthetic effect as pleasure and joy associated with beautiful sights and pictures. To capture the beauty of nature remains an engrossing aim in creating art, the concept of the sublime rather drives my preoccupations as an artist as it allows me to account for the dissonance between nature and humanity’s lived experiences. The sublime allows one to interrogate realities that may be at odds with or even disruptive of natural laws. Perhaps, the sublime, as archaic as it may sound, becomes productive in the efforts to understand the complicated relationship between man and nature in the context of contemporary life.

In apprehending a beautiful phenomenon, as enchanting as the San Remigio sunset, one has to stand on a stretch of white beach that made the town a famous destination for beach lovers. The same coastline has been home to generations of fisherfolk that thrived on the once-abundant maritime food sources. But the same coastline has now become a site of intrusion by unwanted dwellers, the loads of plastics and rubbish that have been accreted in the sand for years. For some, it is a bothering reality for the apathetic others it is what it is, a dirty place. Though clean-ups are frequent, the lasting impacts of garbage pollution are not negligible as microplastics proved to be difficult to remove and continue to harm maritime life. For the keen minds, the aesthetic enjoyment of the sunset on a white sand beach cannot last without realizing the fact that beauty has a social dimension, and perhaps ugliness is necessary too in making people act to avert further environmental damage.

Environmental Humanities and the Anthropocene

When I think of nature today, what comes to mind is the inescapable reality of its degradation. The age of the Anthropocene, as many scientists call it, notes the time when humans take on full dominance of the planet, altering the contours of nature and resulting in changes to the geological and biosphere of the planet (Denny, 6). Under the Anthropocene, mankind has caused the mass extinction of plants and animal species, polluted the oceans, and altered the atmosphere.  Many documentaries and movies show a grim and pessimistic view of the planet’s present and future. 

This contrast between natural beauty and natural degradation has become a concern in what is now an important field called environmental humanities. The global environmental crises demand new ways of thinking and new communities that produce environmental solutions as a form of civic knowledge. It is the belief that the planetary crisis can best be addressed through an interdisciplinary approach to environmental change that includes the humanities and the arts. (Emmett and Nye 2017, 7).  Artists’ collectives and cultural workers started to make a critical stand against unsustainable development. In the case of environmental humanities, artists take on a more transdisciplinary approach, taking notes of scientific data and translating them to works that engage with the public, works that aim at changing minds and hearts, and works that call for immediate action.

In the face of planetary crises, the art that I create has something to do with how nature nurtured me as a child growing up in a family of corn farmers. The same San Remigio sunset, always golden, always beautiful, cast its dramatic warm colors on a field of overgrown cogon grass and an assortment of other wild weeds. This time, I stand not on the white sand of plastic waste but on a field of wild grass that has dominated a once-abundant corn farm. The farm was my grandparents and now has been handed down to my mother. The contrasting beauty of the descending sun about to hide behind the old mango trees against the picture of a wilderness, filled with overgrown grass and untamed shrubs gives me a kind of pain in the heart, when growing up as a child, I was surrounded by the rituals of farming. Now, all is gone as everyone is gone out of the farms, out of the routines of farming. 

My grandparents were the last corn farmers. They were the last to dedicate their entire lives to the tilling of the land. They raised six children and sent them to school to become professionals. They were so proud to have a son becoming the first teacher in the barrio and when my uncle became a seaman and would come home from abroad with chocolates and perfume, they were so proud to have made the right decision. What happened afterward was a series of departures, their children leaving the farm to work elsewhere, away from the farm, away from the life that gave them the chance to see the other side of the world. 

My mother’s intentions were admirable when after retirement she made sure to bring back the old glory days of that piece of land. But under her care, the farm never recovered. She was not equipped to deal with the brunt of climate change. And with the highly destructive typhoons and unpredictable rainfall patterns, the growth of crops is compromised and the gains from the harvest are becoming uncertain. More so, farming in the past was a community affair. Neighbors and relatives would help extend necessary labor in the planting of seeds and the harvesting of the crops. No one is left to help with the work. Many people have moved away from the farms to find alternative work in the city. Parents are sending their children to schools so they would not become farmers like them. Young people including myself, my siblings, and my cousins have no plans to settle back again into the fields. The good earth that was once nourishing has been left for the weeds to thrive in. Not even memories of it could be kept, they too fade, they too fail.

Climate Change and Food Security

With fewer people engaged in food production and while the effects of climate change have started to impact farming communities, food sustainability and security are becoming urgent concerns that should be addressed among climate-vulnerable places such as the Philippines. Making the food system sustainable is not only a technical challenge but also a deeply political one. (Bosker, Behrens, and Ehrhardt 2020,14). With the shortage of food from low-yielding farms, the tendency to contain the problem through food importation has all the more left farming communities at a great disadvantage. The global demand and exchange of food among countries continue to produce greater environmental damage as forestlands are being converted to farms, and many agricultural processes continue to rely on unsustainable and harmful farming practices. 

With the seeming disinterest in agriculture, local government units in the Philippines are converting agricultural lands into residential and commercial areas. Farmers are ‘structurally adjusted’ out of agriculture to enable the consolidation of larger units of production. People who once had direct access to food are no longer connected to their land and the food that they produced, a situation that is destroying food sovereignty and overall food security (Lyons, Lawrence, and Wallington 2013, 4). While already suffering from an oppressive class structure in feudalism, wherein land-related conflicts continue and the call for genuine land reform fall on deaf ears, farmers today are even more impaired by the effects of the changing climate.

In the Philippines, modernity has shaped a quite negative picture of farmers as impoverished, uneducated, and recently as insurgents against law and order. And with the threats of climate change and with minimal support from the government, farmers are becoming discouraged to continue what they know best. Small-scale farmers cannot cope with the rising cost of food production. As more and more young people are leaving farming communities to settle in urban areas to study and work, the growing disinterest is horrifying. Initiatives have to be done at safeguarding and promoting tangible and intangible elements of the Filipino foodscape. Projects have to be undertaken to protect food and culinary cultures given their importance as identity markers, as well as their role in fostering the economic, political, and social empowerment of local communities.

Art for the Future

In all of the challenges that impede the symbiotic co-existence of man and nature, people have somewhat become homesick within their own earthly homes. They long for serenity amidst the chaos of urban life. They trust in faith as they face too many uncertainties. And true that in ancient times, art was aimed at bridging the distance between humanity and the natural world, art perhaps could aid contemporary man in navigating through the precarious present as the environmental crisis accelerates. What people of power take for granted or hide, artists reveal and communicate. Environmental art takes bold steps in ensuring that the art public does not end up simply living in the enchantment of a thousand sunsets but rather illumined by data and discourse, they take on concrete action to ensure that the sun will not ever take its final course, nor a charming forest orchid ever dies out in extinction. And while living in precarious times, artists should commit to creating art for planet’s sake, making compelling works that prevent civilizations advanced enough in developing the very means of their own destruction. 

Bosker, Thijs, Paul Behrens, and David Ehrhardt, eds. 2020. Food and Sustainability. N.p.: Oxford University Press.

Burke, Edmund. 1757. A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful. London.

Denny, Mark. 2017. Making the Most of the Anthropocene: Facing the Future. N.p.: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Emmett, Robert S., and David E. Nye. 2017. The Environmental Humanities: A Critical Introduction. N.p.: MIT Press.

Lyons, Kristen, Geoffrey Lawrence, and Tabatha Wallington, eds. 2013. Food Security, Nutrition and Sustainability. N.p.: Earthscan.

Pandey, Shivaji, and Clayton Campanhola, eds. 2018. Sustainable Food and Agriculture: An Integrated Approach. N.p.: Elsevier Science.