As a nod to academic research protocol, attributions are included in standard footnote format as design elements within many of the images of this series. Full attributions and descriptions are below:
Tipping Points
Acrylic paint, graphite and colored pencils, walnut ink, pastel on cotton canvas. 34 x 53 inches.©Suzette Marie Martin, 2023
Acrylic paint, graphite and colored pencils, walnut ink, pastel on cotton canvas. 34 x 53 inches.©Suzette Marie Martin, 2023
Climate tipping points are critical thresholds that, once crossed, tip a natural system into an entirely different state and lead to potentially irreversible, catastrophic impacts.
The passage the artist chose from the book of Genesis describes a tipping point for humanity: Adam and Eve are expelled from the Garden of Eden and all future humans are punished with a life of toil, pain and death. The 1495 Bible from which the text was sourced was mechanically printed; however, it imitates handwritten medieval manuscripts in both the lettering style and layout, with larger lines of scripture interwoven with smaller lines of commentary. The artist inserted new commentary: a mathematical formula for calculating climate tipping points, pairing an ancient theological tipping point with a contemporary scientific tipping point, each written in a specialized esoteric language.
The chart “Nine Planetary Boundaries for Biosphere Integrity” depicts a series of tipping point/ safety zone boundaries for essential planetary systems. Green represents safe and sustainable boundaries for a system, orange illustrates planetary systems that have crossed into unsustainable danger zones.
The chart of the Glacial/Interglacial Cycle represents the natural fluctuation between an ice age and temperate climate. It visualizes a “Runaway Hothouse Earth Scenario” tipping point where crossing the boundary of 2ºC above pre-industrial global temperature averages interupts the ice age and temperate climate cycle, as global land and atmospheric temperatures continue to rise for millennia.
The scientific discoveries of the Renaissance prompted multiple tipping points in the evolution of knowledge. A 1688 chart shows a geocentric conception of the universe as a finite system of nested spheres, cut open in cross-section to reveal celestial bodies revolving around the central Earth.The book containing this chart was published 55 years after Galileo was convicted of heresy for defending his observations that the Earth and planets revolved around the sun. Despite cultural denialism, religious, and political resistance, this ancient view of universe was already obsolete in 1688.
Boulenger, Jean. Traité de la sphère du monde. France, Chez Jean Jombert, 1688.
Bible. Latin. Vulgate, Genesis 3: 22-24. Venice, 1495
Reassessment of climate tipping points, Supplementary Materials for Science, Vol. 377, No 6611, 2022. “Exceeding Global Warming Could trigger Multiple Climate tipping Points”, Mckay et al.
Chart: “Nine Planetary Boundaries for Biosphere Integrity”, Designed by Azote for Stockholm Resilience Centre, based on analysis in Wang-Erlandsson et al 2022.
Chart: “A schematic illustration of possible future pathways of the climate against the background of the typical glacial–interglacial cycles”. Trajectories of the Earth System in the Anthropocene, Will Steffan et al, Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, Vol. 115, No. 33, 2018.
Overshoot Indicators (The Tower)
Acrylic paint, graphite pencil, walnut ink, chalk pastel on cotton canvas. 29.5 x 44.5 inches.©Suzette Marie Martin, 2023
The background of this image is a hand-written fragment from the IPPC Report (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), describing the indicators and consequences of “overshoot” (exceeding the 1.5ºC global temperature increase above pre-industrial levels). A chart representing nine interdependent biosphere systems that are required for sustainable life, and an illustration based on an early 20th century mystical divination card are superimposed over the text. The artist pairs imagery related to supernatural belief with data-based science, using layering, dissolution, and difficult to decipher, antiquated calligraphy to highlight the inaccessibility of technical writing and visualize the experience of information overload.
The Tower is the XVI Major Arcana card from the Rider-Waite-Smith tarot divination deck. According to A. E. Waite's 1910 book The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, the Tower card is associated with misery, distress, indigence, adversity, calamity, disgrace, deception, ruin. It is a card of unforeseen catastrophe, danger, crisis, sudden change, destruction.
The graphic representation of “Nine Planetary Boundaries for Biosphere Integrity” depicts the “safe operating spaces” for essential biosystems: Stratospheric Ozone Depletion,
Loss of Biosphere Integrity (Biodiversity Loss and Extinctions), The Release of Novel Entities (Chemical Pollution), Climate Change, Ocean acidification, Freshwater Consumption and the Global Hydrological Cycle, Land System Change, Nitrogen and Phosphorus flows to the Biosphere and Oceans, Atmospheric aerosol loading (Air Pollution). Green represents sustainable boundaries for a system, orange illustrates planetary systems that have crossed into danger zones. In September 2023, six of the nine boundaries were determined to be crossed, marking a “critical threshold for increasing risks to people and the ecosystems we are part of”.
Loss of Biosphere Integrity (Biodiversity Loss and Extinctions), The Release of Novel Entities (Chemical Pollution), Climate Change, Ocean acidification, Freshwater Consumption and the Global Hydrological Cycle, Land System Change, Nitrogen and Phosphorus flows to the Biosphere and Oceans, Atmospheric aerosol loading (Air Pollution). Green represents sustainable boundaries for a system, orange illustrates planetary systems that have crossed into danger zones. In September 2023, six of the nine boundaries were determined to be crossed, marking a “critical threshold for increasing risks to people and the ecosystems we are part of”.
IPCC 2021: Summary for Policymakers. In: Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis. WGI AR6, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK and New York, NY, USA. doi:10.1017/9781009157896
Rider–Waite Tarot, also known as the Waite–Smith, Rider–Waite–Smith, or Rider Tarot. Based on the instructions of academic and mystic A. E. Waite and illustrated by Pamela Colman Smith, both members of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Originally published by the Rider Company in 1909.
Chart: The 2023 update to the Planetary boundaries. Licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Azote for Stockholm Resilience Centre, based on analysis in Richardson et al 2023".
The Sacred Theory: Deluge and Conflagration
Acrylic paint, graphite and colored pencils, walnut ink, pastel on cotton canvas. 34 x 53 inches. ©Suzette Marie Martin, 2022-2023
Acrylic paint, graphite and colored pencils, walnut ink, pastel on cotton canvas. 34 x 53 inches. ©Suzette Marie Martin, 2022-2023
This drawing adapts a title from a 1684 book of theological speculation about a divine cycle of destruction of the Earth for humanity’s sinful behavior. An illustration from the book’s title page, and the quote below, frame the composition:
“The Philosophers have always spoken of Fire and Water, those two unruly Elements, as the only Causes that can destroy the World, and work our ruine; And accordingly they say, all the great and fatal Revolutions of Nature, either past or to come, depend upon the violence of these Two; when they get the mastery, and overwhelm all the rest and the whole Earth, in a Deluge or Conflagration.”
The background of the drawing consists of an excerpt from the latest IPCC Report, a summary of thousands of scientific studies with data confirming rising sea levels, destructive storms and floods, droughts and wildfires. The report opens with: “It is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land.” 21st century charts, graphs and data document escalating greenhouse gas emissions, their correlation with dangerous levels of global temperature rise, and the interactions among planetary systems essential for biosphere integrity.
Two Renaissance charts calculate the positions of constellations and the orbital paths of celestial bodies, using a conception of the universe that places Earth, and humanity itself, at it's center. The geocentric worldview has been displaced, but the anthropocentric idea of human exceptionalism, above all other entities in Nature, continues to have dire environmental consequences in the 21st century.
Thomas Burnet, The Theory of the Earth: Containing an Account of the Original of the Earth, and of all the General Changes Which it hath already Undergone, or is to Undergo, Till the Consummation of all Things. London, 1684.
Pierre de Sainte Marie Magdeleine, Traite D’Horlogiographie, Paris, 1691.
Boulenger, Jean. Traité de la sphère du monde. France, Chez Jean Jombert, 1688.
IPCC, 2021: Summary for Policymakers. In: Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis. WGI AR6, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK and New York, NY, USA. doi:10.1017/9781009157896.
Chart: Fig. S10. The interaction between the biosphere integrity planetary boundary and other planetary boundaries. science.www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/science.1259855/DC1
Chart: GHG concentration stabilization level, IPCC 2007, AR4, WG3, SPM, Figure SPM 8.
Chart: Hannah Ritchie, Max Roser and Pablo Rosado (2020) - "CO₂ and Greenhouse Gas Emissions". Retrieved from: 'https://ourworldindata.org/co2-and-greenhouse-gas-emissions' [Online Resource]
Paradoxa Hydrostatica
Walnut ink, ink marker, colored and graphite pencil on 100% cotton paper. 22 x 30 inches.©Suzette Marie Martin, 2023
Walnut ink, ink marker, colored and graphite pencil on 100% cotton paper. 22 x 30 inches.©Suzette Marie Martin, 2023
Paradoxa hydrostatica novis experimentis (maximam partem physicis ac facilibus) evicta is a scientific treatise by Robert Boyle, written in Latin and published in 1677. It consists of a series of paradoxes, or counterintuitive experiments, related to hydrostatics, the branch of physics that deals with fluids at rest. Boyle's experiments included deducing the properties of air as a fluid, how temperature affects air pressure, and the relationship between the weight and volume of air. “Boyle’s Law” remains a foundation for contemporary climate, atmospheric and weather prediction models, an essential tool as global atmospheric heating related to greenhouse gas emissions continues to rise.
The central feature of this work is an enlarged illustration from Paradoxa Hydrostatica of an apparatus used in Boyle’s experiments. This technical drawing, with details showing individual labeled parts, visually describes how to manufacture and assemble a duplicate apparatus, allowing others to test and verify his theories. This new type of illustration facilitated the sharing of knowledge essential to the development of the modern scientific method.
Text in the background of this drawing includes an excerpt from the latest IPCC Report, a summary of thousands of scientific studies that confirm human-caused atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and other gaseous emissions are responsible for the escalation of global temperatures, severe and changing weather patterns, and other deleterious effects.
This report is interwoven with excerpts from a factsheet on greenhouse gas emissions and the Latin Vulgate translation of Genesis 3, the story of the banishment of humanity from a garden paradise for the acquisition of forbidden knowledge. Latin, the early modern language of both science and theology, is paired with a groundbreaking example of scientific inquiry into understanding natural phenomena through observation and data, rather than through mythological explanations.
Robert Boyle, Paradoxa hydrostatica novis experimentis (maximam partem physicis ac facilibus) evicta, Geneva, 1677.
IPCC 2021: Summary for Policymakers. In: Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis. WGI AR6, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK and New York, NY, USA. doi:10.1017/9781009157896
Center for Sustainable Systems, University of Michigan. 2022. “Greenhouse Gases Factsheet.” Pub No. CSS05-21.
Bible. Latin. Vulgate, Venice, 1495. Genesis 3:1-24.
Cherubim of the Flaming Sword
Walnut ink, gold acrylic paint, colored, charcoal and graphite pencils on cotton paper with gesso. 22 x 30 inches. ©Suzette Marie Martin, 2023
Walnut ink, gold acrylic paint, colored, charcoal and graphite pencils on cotton paper with gesso. 22 x 30 inches. ©Suzette Marie Martin, 2023
This is a story about your world falling apart
and everything you know being transformed.
But not in a good way.
and everything you know being transformed.
But not in a good way.
You and your partner are living an easy life in an abundant garden.
The next thing you know,
you break a rule,
you gain some knowledge
and all humanity is banished for eternity!
A winged being with a flaming sword forbids your return.
The next thing you know,
you break a rule,
you gain some knowledge
and all humanity is banished for eternity!
A winged being with a flaming sword forbids your return.
For centuries you believe that all the known heavenly bodies
( the stars! the planets! the moon! the sun! )
revolve around you in a predictable and comforting way.
And then one day,
it becomes undeniably clear that
you are not the center of the universe.
( the stars! the planets! the moon! the sun! )
revolve around you in a predictable and comforting way.
And then one day,
it becomes undeniably clear that
you are not the center of the universe.
Thomas Heywood, The Hierarchie of the Blessed Angells, London, 1634
IPCC, 2021: Summary for Policymakers. In: Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis. WGI AR6, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK and New York, NY, USA. doi:10.1017/9781009157896
Boulenger, Jean. Traité de la sphère du monde. France, Chez Jean Jombert, 1688.
Bible. Latin. Vulgate, Genesis 3:22. Venice, 1495.