Printmaking and Activism

In the fall of 2021, I took an intro to printmaking class that focused on printmaking as a tool for activism. On top of learning a variety of printmaking techniques, such as woodcut, linocut, and intaglio, we learned about the history of printmaking as activism and themed each of our projects after a different activism theme.

My final print for the class is titled “Sustainable”. Inspired by an exhibit in the Hoover Institution Library and Archives titled Fanning the Flames, our class each created a piece based off of the theme “paradox and pattern.” This print, along with 10 others created by my peers and professor, is now archived at the Hoover Library. My final statement about the piece is as follows:

For more than 50 years, fossil fuel companies have known about the potential damages that the continuation of producing and consuming fossil fuels would have on the planet. Since then, they have employed many tactics to persuade the public otherwise, from funding scientists to exaggerate scientific uncertainty to persuading us that climate change is our fault, not theirs (don’t believe me? Look up the origin of the carbon footprint). Nowadays, we see the rise of a new tactic: greenwashing. Because they can no longer hide their enormous contributions to carbon dioxide emissions, they instead create empty sustainability promises and exaggerate their renewable energy sections (for example, Exxon has spent a measly 0.2% of their expenditures on renewable energy). This piece, “Sustainable”, highlights the absurdity of this greenwashing.