ART TO THE RESCUE OF THE PLANET
(Note: The art installation Be the Drop that Shapes the Wave was presented for the first time during a UN 2023 Water Conference special event hosted by Femsa Foundation – Scroll to the end of the post to watch the making Be the Drop that Shapes the Wave.The play LOVE authored and directed by Alexander Zeldin was performed at the Park Armory in New York in from in February and March 2023.)
Somewhere among the routine schedule of meetings, the policy papers, and tightly scripted speeches of besuited officials gathering at the 2023 UN Conference on Water, one presentation stands apart.
A vast dynamic piece of art proposes raising awareness about the urgent water situation in Latin America. Composed of 8,000 ceramic beads, each representing a drop of water, it is the imagined work of New York-based artist Inma Barrero and more than 100 entrepreneurs, leaders of corporations and governmental agencies, artists, activists, and children.
Its name is inspiring: Be the Drop that Shapes the Wave. Its reason for being, however, is frightening.
Over 2 billion people worldwide cannot access safe drinking water or sanitation. During the pandemic, many could not even wash their hands. Until and unless decision-makers act on the critical need to make safe water available for all, the situation will only worsen as the global population grows exponentially. This United Nations meeting in New York City was long overdue.
In Latin America alone, the water shortage affects seven out of ten people, according to the local not-for-profit Lazos de Agua program. That represents 160 million people—that is the populations of Argentina, Colombia, Venezuela, and Peru combined!
To face this challenge, an artwork co-created by a well-known artist and dozens of people spread out in 15 countries, including children from public schools in Manhattan and the Lycée Français de New York, might seem, at best, decorative.
Or is it?
Tag: Hillary Clinton
Listen to the Women and Girls of Iran
Listen to the Women and Girls of Iran
It was gigantic and staring at me. Everyone around seemed as mesmerized by it as I was: an eye, wide open. It was staring at the sky, too, and it covered most of the steps of Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Park at the far end of the oblong Roosevelt Island on the East River, an unlikely urban cable car stop away from Manhattan. In the background, lurking in the shadows, stood the 39-story United Nations building, proud and self-confident.
In that park, at the bottom of the steps that morning of November 28, 2022, every spoken word and every single stare were targeted at the United Nations, at the United Nations and Iran.
Letter to Angella Nazarian
Letter to Angella Nazarian
On the eve of Visionary Women Summit 2021 – https://www.visionarywomen.com
(Quotes below, unless in italics, are invented, and the attribution to people is purely fictional)
Dear Angella;
Do you remember the cobblestone streets of Coyoacán in Mexico City, a far cry from the busy double deck jammed highways that drive across the megalopolis? I am sure you remember the first time you pushed the double green doors of the Blue House—Casa Azul, the home of Frida Kahlo. I do, and I have returned there so often.
The Vital Power of Youth and Words
The Vital Power of Youth and Words: 22-year-old Poetess Amanda Gorman to Perform at Joe Biden’s Inauguration
A Rock, a River, a Tree
Maya Angelou, On The Pulse of Morning
Hosts of species long departed
Marked the mastodon,
The dinosaur, who left dried tokens
Of their sojourn here
Women Have Power: Let’s Hear Them
Women Have Power: Let’s Hear Them
A conversation with Alyse Nelson, President and co-Founder of Vital Voices for Global Partnership. Co-editor of Vital Voices: 100 Women to Empower Other Women (Assouline)
Forget for a moment Joe Biden’s victory as President-elect and Donald Trump’s struggles with defeat, one of the main news from the 2020 American Presidential election is Senator Kamala Harris. For the first time in history, a woman—a Black, Asian woman—will become the first female Vice President of the United States. Harris will also rank first in line to succeed Joe Biden as President.
Besides the election of Kamala Harris, women seem to have taken center political stage whether it is in the United States or on the opposite side of the world.
Women actually played a key role in the 2020 American elections a mere 100 years after the 19th amendment of the American Constitution granting women’s suffrage was passed. Fast forward to 2020, 57% of women—and among them 90% of Black women—chose the Democratic candidate over the incumbent President, according to NBC News. Women also voted more than men (52%). In other words, they decided the Presidential outcome and chose Joe Biden although Donald Trump increased his base of white women voters.
Ahead of the Presidential election, another woman, Justice Amy Coney Barrett also made history and became the only the fifth woman to sit on the United States Supreme Court in 230 years. A woman Justice has replaced another one. While it surely seems to be a positive step for women’s empowerment and gender equality, succession might not be as simple as just having a woman leader succeeding another one. Ruth Bader Ginsburg was the American champion of women’s rights; based on the 48-year old Justice Barrett’s past judicial positions show, the new Justice is not.