Man-made disaster

Irina Wang is a product designer and graphic designer.

She grew up Taiwanese-Floridian before moving to London for undergraduate studies and working as a graphic designer at Pentagram. In the past she’s combined her love of typography, literature, and environmental theory by designing alongside linguists and native communities to revitalise endangered languages. She’s now applying this transdisciplinary approach and getting her hands dirty at RISD’s Master of Industrial Design programme with a focus on energy systems and nuclear nonproliferation.

She has a soft spot for leavened bread, 50mm lenses, long-form journalism, her old Bianchi, campfire smell, and the printed word. As a dedicated generalism specialist, she is happiest dabbling in too many things but will skew cynical if she doesn’t climb a tree, pet a cat, or complete a crossword every once in a while.

jasper avery is a poet and artist living in Philadelphia, PA. Her work is indebted to the intersections of queerness, radical ecology, and liberation both spiritual and political. Her debut collection, number one earth, is the winner of the 2017 Metatron Prize for Rising Authors, and her work has appeared in ALPHA, hotdog, the Puritan, and Real Life Mag.

"There are two meanings of the word ‘Fortune’ - one is ‘assets’ and the other is 'luck'. I decided to depict images of fortune cookies, and synchronised the visual similarity between them and female genitalia, implying the women’s bodies should not be fetishised, owned or traded by the patriarchal society as products or considered as privileged or a blessing.

According to research, one of the main reasons for climate change is the excessive production of factories. Consumers have followed fast-food and fashion habits for years. These mass produced items are mostly made by female and child labourers in developing countries. Girls are born to be sold to factories or sex traders. Women’s bodies are not a blessing in these struggling places, they are made to suffer by the massive consumerism monster. Changing our excessive shopping behaviour, improving the trading environment and fighting for fair women labour rights is crucial to saving our planet. I hope the people who put on this badge can remind themselves and others of this message."

"It’s not a coincidence that a woman’s menstrual cycle aligns with the lunar calendar. The moon not only dictates the earth’s tides but also the very flow of our life blood.

Women’s bodies are naturally in sync with the rhythm of our planet. Yet this powerful connection has been deliberately denied and repressed by a few thousand years of patriarchy that has sought to control women’s potency and constrain the power of the natural world. It’s not just our blood that is taboo, our connection to the moon that is ‘lunacy’, it’s the natural rhythm of our planet that is under attack.

Now is the time to take our power back.

Together we need to reject the 24-hour, capitalist culture of consumerism fuelled by speed and greed. We need to stop, unplug and switch off. Now is the time to rediscover our physical and spiritual connection to our planet, to celebrate women’s collective power, to sing and dance in solidarity, to reclaim the rhythm - for Mother Earth and all her children."

Team Patchwork runs a group-gift platform built to celebrate love, creativity and collaboration. Their mission is to save unwanted gifts from landfill. And to eat all the crisps.

"As a response to the brief, I wanted to create an image that would firstly be striking, with a bold, vibrant primary colour palette and secondly, have a contrast between the passive, dreamy attitude of my female character and the message she's giving."

Marylou Faure is a Parisian illustrator and artist, currently based in London.

Her playful work is recognised for its vibrant colour palette and quirky style. Since her move to London, she has collaborated with global brands and agencies, providing illustration for a broad range of digital and print projects. Specialising in character design, bold colours and hand-written typography, Marylou aspires to create artwork that invokes joy through a cheeky and playful style. She expresses herself best when representing the female form and advocating equal rights for all. Above all, Marylou believes in using her skills for good and enjoys working on projects for a strong social or ethical cause.

Hyphen-Labs is an international collective working at the intersection of technology, art, science, and the future. Through their global vision and multi-disciplinary backgrounds they are driven to create engaging ways to explore planetary-centred design. In the process they challenge conventions and stimulate conversations, placing collective needs and experiences at the centre of evolving narratives.

"Moments of waiting for a little girl, before being rescued from the rubble. These fragile feelings between life and death, and breath or suffocation, it's the vacuum that separates her real face from an imaginary version of it, she hears a voice - 'don't be afraid I'm here'.

This girl, stuck in the rubble, represents a moment of resistance in the reality of the destruction; silence and loneliness in the adult’s war. So the truth here is cold, and her mother is still looking for her.

In the artwork, I used the collage on canvas for a photo of a little girl (myself) in black and white with some drawings of charcoal. This image is inside sixteen boxes of the same size. The boxes are the colour of cold cement. I layered on a soft net of metal to make the image more blurry and as a confusing memory. Then, I layered a collage of white fragile paper that’s almost transparent, like soft light coming from another side of hope. On these papers are drawings that use different techniques in the colours of soil."

Reem Yassouf was born in Damascus, Syria. She graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts Department of painting, University of Damascus in 2000 and has been active since then. In 2015, she moved to France and now lives in Rouen city. 

She has taken part in many exhibitions, collectives, workshops, and solo exhibitions,

in her homeland, Syria, as well as in Jordan, Lebanon, London , France, Italy , Holland, Germany, Qatar, Dubai, Kuwait, Andorra and Washington DC.

One of her paintings was chosen by UNESCO as the cover for their children's summer school book 2014 and her work has been featured in many cultural magazines, poetic and literary books. She is one of the founders of the Festival Khan Al-Funoun in Jordan.

"Weightless is a series of portraits of Maldivian girls floating in the Indian Ocean. It explores the identity of a nation which is under the threat of disappearing. Over 80 per cent of the Maldives sit only one metre above sea level. If water continues to rise in line with current expectations, the islands will be underwater by the end of this century. The photos were taken on Hulhumalé Island during the school holidays, when youngsters spend lots of time in the water. The girls caught my attention with their bright outfits and their genuine love of water. Floating on the surface of the Indian Ocean, these eerie portraits explore 
a relationship to the very ocean which threatens to submerge them."

Sabba Khan is an architectural designer and graphic novelist. Sabba’s art explores themes of belonging, memory and identity, within the personal context of her second generation Azad Kashmiri working class upbringing. Her debut graphic novel is due for release with Myriad Editions in 2021.  

Shagufta K. Iqbal is a Writer, Facilitator and Filmmaker. She is the author of Jam is For Girls, Girls Get Jam and founder of 'The Yoniverse' Collective. 

"We did this in 1994 as a comment on how corporate greed and consumer culture undermine environmentalism. Sad to say, some things haven’t changed."

"For the past few decades, the residents of Granby, Liverpool, have been actively working to take control of their neighbourhood in an environment where the Council gradually rescinded their responsibilities, leaving houses boarded up and the physical fabric of the area deteriorating. A resourceful and creative group of residents started to bring the neighbourhood back to life by cleaning, mural painting, planting and campaigning; positioning picnic tables along the footpath to create adaptable social spaces and establishing a monthly market. Subsequently, the Granby Four Streets Community Land Trust (CLT) was formed to secure a row of empty houses and renovate them as affordable homes on Cairns Street.

The success of greening the neighbourhood juxtaposed a powerful image of community against the decades of managed decline through a literal extension of resident’s individual homes into the public realm; a collectivity of domestic spaces, which transcend their material quality. Granby Four Streets CLT Chair Eleanor Lee, describes how the actions of Granby residents made this possible by what she refers to as ‘creative caretaking’:

“...because all our lives were dominated by the degradation of the physical environment, the long haul began with cleaning and clearing rubbish and endless brushing and painting - and the very female/undervalued domestic activities that normally take place in the home but now moved in public space and started to stretch over entire streets.”

Statements presented in this exhibition suggest that, under patriarchy, women are expected to be more selfless and socially responsible than men. Whilst “climate change disproportionately affects women and girls precisely because women and girls are already marginalised”, eco-friendliness is considered by some to be “unmanly” and “environmental altruism and selflessness make men feel less macho and they fear that green actions will brand them as ‘feminine’. Much like domestic work, environmental friendliness is gendered. Countering such traditional representations of the home, the work on Granby Four Streets, presented here in both archival and more recent photographs, shows how conventional tasks usually undertaken within the privacy of the house itself have the power, when made visible, to enact a transformative form of politics.

Assemble initially proposed the Granby Winter Garden as part of a network of projects to help support the re-building of the Granby Four Streets for community ownership and benefit. Occupying two houses at the heart of Cairns Street, the Garden, pictured here, was imagined as a creative, sustainable and inclusive social space, which could be the focus of neighbourhood activity. Community gardening and creative action has been the foundation for positive change in Granby, and the Winter Garden is a space to celebrate this history and support this collective culture long-term."

Assemble is a multi-disciplinary collective working across architecture, design and art. Founded in 2010 to undertake a single self-built project, Assemble has since delivered a diverse and award-winning body of work, whilst retaining a democratic and co-operative working method that enables built, social and research-based work, both making things and making things happen. Assemble's work is characterised by a holistic view of projects combined with a diversity of output. It spans across different scales and mediums, from strategic and organisational development, to product design and manufacturing, to curation and programming and design and construction of full-scale building projects.

"This film stands as the voice for the invisible work of women in the midst of climate change. Their stories represent a thousand more similar struggles that the world has not been talking about. Linking sexual and reproductive rights to climate change may seem bizarre at first, but it is very important because it concerns our population and the care for humanity's nurturers - our mothers."

Inshallah Montero is an award-winning filmmaker from the Philippines whose work focuses on women’s rights and the environment.

Her recent documentaries highlight the voices of women living on the frontlines of climate change.

Women of the Shore: The Hidden Burden of Climate Change was screened at the COP21 Climate Change Conference 2015 in Paris and her film Women of the Forest was awarded as the second best movie at the Climate and Environment International Film Festival in Myanmar.

The Film Development Council of the Philippines awarded her as one of their Film Ambassadors for 2018. She considers herself an eternal student and is driven by the uncertainty of life.

"Concerning the actual world situation, action is required.

We live our lives immobile and numb between noise, technology and pollution... not considering all those elements killers of our vitality.

Sit down and think. Be alert. Be aware. Take your responsibility.

You are one part of the cosmos. Do not be surprised if you get the frisbee back."

Cachetejack are Nuria Bellver and Raquel Fanjul, a Spanish freelance illustration duo with a nomadic lifestyle.

Their illustration universe is full of colors, energy, humour and irony. The hand-drawn work of Cachetejack takes a fresh and unique style working in a variety of mediums, including - but not limited to - books, magazines, newspapers, clothing, drawing, painting, walls and illustration.

Cachetejack combines reality with a quirky point of view to create situations and environments closer to the viewer.

"It’s minus one and I’m standing in a forest in Scotland. It’s bright and clear, and I can hear running water. I take off my shoes and feel the mud and moss and sharp bits in-between my toes. It smells of rain and pine and green. I start to draw, rain falls, and then hail, and then snow. The rain draws too, the ink runs. My feet are cold."

Nell Brookfield is an artist and recent graduate from the Royal Drawing School, after reading anthropology at UCL. In January 2019 she completed a drawing residency at Rhode Island School of Design. Her work fuses together memories and everyday experiences. For Nell, the process of drawing is her way of making sense of both the world and herself. In 2018 she exhibited at Christie's, the Royal Drawing School, and Space Studios Hackney. Nell is currently volunteering with the environmental charity Pathway to Paris, which aims to get a 1000 cities fossil fuel free by 2040.

Sarah Boris is an artist and graphic designer based in London. After working for over ten years for organisations such as Phaidon, ICA, the Barbican and Tate, she set up her own in 2015, with a focus on branding, editorial design and developing her art practice. In parallel to commissioned projects Sarah creates screen printed artworks during artist residencies. She is a regular speaker at design conferences and in universities. Her work was acquired by the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam and was exhibited at the Design Museum, London and at Une Saison Graphique, Le Havre, France.

"Kiribati is a small island nation in the South Pacific. One of the most low-lying and isolated countries on the planet, scientists say it is in danger of disappearing from rising sea levels in the next 50 years. The highest point on many of the islands is just two metres above sea level. While rising ocean sea levels are threatening to shrink Kiribati’s land area, increase storm damage, destroy its crop growing lands and ultimately displace its people long before the islands are submerged.

Despite the science, many islanders are climate sceptics – their strong religious beliefs and dedication to the Catholic Church has contributed to this scepticism. In the words of one local, 'God has a plan for us'. While the former President bought land in Fiji as part of the 'Migration with Dignity’ scheme (with the aim to give its residents the choice to relocate before they are forced to leave their homes as climate refugees), the current government has done much to quickly undo the work the prior administration took to tackle the issue. They have banned journalists from reporting on climate change. Victims of the world's frenzied and systematic exploitation of natural resources, the future of the Kiribati women and girls remain in question."

Alice Aedy is a photojournalist and documentary filmmaker whose work explores themes of women’s rights, environmental issues and forced migration. Bringing a human face to global humanitarian issues, her assignments have sent her to Iran to cover women's rights, Somaliland to cover the droughts and Kiribati to document rising sea levels. She recently travelled to Kenya to go behind the scenes on Netflix and WWF’s Our Planet series narrated by David Attenborough. Her work has been featured in The Guardian, The Times, Vice, Huck Magazine, Suitcase Magazine, Al Jazeera, Monocle, Smith Journal and the BBC.

"Women do it better is homage to the powerful and dedicated women helping to save the planet."

Lucy Kirk is a ceramicist and illustrator who has worked for clients including Alexander McQueen, Grindr and Lush.

Lizzie Reid is a creative and designer currently at Google Creative Lab, London. She graduated from Kingston Art School in 2014, after which she worked as an Art Director at Pentagram and Do the Green Thing. She's passionate about how creativity can play a role in tackling political and social issues.

Hana Kudsi is a Syrian-born British artist. She grew up in Beirut, and spent her adult life in London. Hana is interested in the relationship between people and their environments, particularly when they cross borders and grapple with dual identities. The more the civil war raged in Syria, the more obsessed she became.

Hana uses mixed media in her work, and paints on paper, a delicate and fragile medium.

A diploma in art and design from Chelsea School of Art taught her: Untie my hands and let me fly.

A degree in illustration from Central Saint Martins showed her: The lines of my hands are my path.

"Boys and girls are conditioned to be who they are. Boys are conditioned to hunt and build. Girls are conditioned to love and help. Inverting the song from My Fair Lady that rants at how wonderful men are and how unreasonable women are, we painted beards, moustaches, lipstick and flick-ups onto cover stars, turning women into beautiful boys and asking manly men to get over themselves and get on with some flipping recycling."

Huntley Muir is an artist duo experimenting across a wide range of mediums including digital imaging, painting, illustration, video animation, set design and installation.

Tea Uglow is a writer and speaker on innovation, inclusion, arts & culture and digital futures. Tea founded Google’s Creative Lab in Sydney where they work on a range of projects with cultural organisations and practitioners globally to enable artists, writers, dancers and other traditional cultural practitioners to digitally augment or adapt their work.

Her writing includes:

Loud & Proud [Quarto, Nov 2019], A Universe Explodes, [EAP, 2018] and A Curiosity of Doubts [Penguin, 2016].

Editions at Play was awarded a Peabody for digital storytelling in 2018. Her 2016 TEDx talk has more than 1.6m views. She mentors queer, female and other intersectional creators and coders worldwide. She likes pop-physics, behavioural psychology, and shopping.

Carbon Hourglass

"The recent IPCC has concluded that the world now has only 12 years to stop runaway climate change by keeping the temperature rise to 1.5 degrees. These temperature changes seem small but significantly increase the risk of floods, droughts, extreme heat and poverty.

The time has run out for complacency."

(Hand-blown glass with waste glass and volcanic black sand)

I Want You To Panic

"The urgent call to action from a school child can cut through the noise of the loud (and male) political climate deniers.

Climate change is not a political artefact or gigantic false alarm . As Greta says, we need to act as if our house if on fire.

Keeping the global temperature rise to only 1.5 degrees will give the young a fighting chance."

Quotes from: N. Lawson, C. Booker, R. Spencer, J. Inhofe and Greta Thunberg.

(Letterpress print using ink made from recovered pure carbon pigment extracted from end-of-life tyres)

Ocean Hourglass

"Our sand is too polluted to flow. Every part of our planet is suffering from human impact. By 2050 there may be more plastic in the oceans than finfish in mass."

(Hand-blown glass with waste glass and sand samples from the ocean edge, Cornwall).

Sophie Thomas is an unusual mix of creative campaigner, practicing designer and agitator. She has been working in the fields of sustainable design, behaviour change and material process for over 20 years; through her design agency, Thomas.Matthews ltd; and through a number of campaigning posts including Director of Circular Economy at the RSA.

A curiosity in material disposal, recycling and recovering led Sophie to share her experience of closed-loop thinking with other designers. In 2012, she founded The Great Recovery, a programme to build capacity and understanding of circular design in the materials supply chain, that she ran through the RSA, supported by Innovate UK for four years until 2016.

Her long-term interest in materials and waste that has taken her around the world, exploring attitudes to waste (including a day working on the bins) and helping networks including designers, scientists waste managers, businesses and politicians to re-design systems for resources recovery.

Sophie works with government, businesses and designers around the world to build narrative around green living and creative sustainability. Using the insight taken from end-of-life processes she has built an in-depth knowledge of material re-use. She has worked and lectured around the world and has exhibited in many countries across Europe and Asia. She is the first designer to become a Chartered Waste Manager, is a trustee for WRAP UK, designs, writes and talks about designing out waste. and has been awarded an Honorary Fellowship at UAL.

"Bedouin women have long been charged with assembling the tribes’ Beit-al-sha’ar (house of hair), weaving yards of tent material from the hair of goats and the wool of sheep. With limited resources, weaving has been their means of self-expression in the face of societal submission for centuries, architects silenced in a world of men. For them, responding to the environment has never been an intellectual exercise; it is their way of life. Unlike the structures of stone and concrete which could one day be deserted, left as ruins in the shifting sands, the Beit-al-shaar is a symbol of their voices, an ever-inhabited mobile home within which their daily lives unfolds. 

This piece aims to reveal this kind of 'matriarchal architecture' and its purposeful and centuries-old social weaving process; an adaptive environmental response to the harsh climate of the Jordanian Badia. However, with the encroaching impact of tourism to their territories, the bedouin tribes of Wadi Rum have increasingly abandoned their pastoral existence to engage with the emergent economy and influx of travellers. This shift has manifested in the most extraordinary ways, as men are called out to build concrete structures and erect ‘supposed’ eco-lodge bubbles, while the women-held knowledge of adaptive environmental tent-craftsmanship is hidden away, held captive behind another block in the patriarchal wall."

Abeer Seikaly is a Jordanian-Palestinian artist with interdisciplinary skills spanning architecture, design, and cultural production.

"This piece explores the relationship between dominant societal structures centred on patriarchy, and the climate crisis. It invites us to challenge narrow approaches to change that overlook the systemic nature of this problem; it is not by coincidence but by design, that we have reached this level of exploitation of people and the planet.

We propose a feminist vision for what an alternative, truly transformational and sustainable system could look like, and the structures that could underpin it; we also highlight the incompatibility between the two systems.

Our work is inspired by discourses of radical love, liberation, intersectionality and climate justice; as well as Indigenous cosmovisions, where humans are understood to be part of, not above nature."

Juliana Vélez Echeverri and Marcela Terán are Latin American feminists involved in, and inspired by, climate justice and intersectional movements. Their interdisciplinary collaboration - Juliana is a lawyer and researcher, Marcela is a designer and comms specialist - seeks to open up space for reflection, connection, transformation and liberation.

"In parts of Bangladesh, women living closer to bodies of water have an increased rate of miscarriage compared to those living further inland. This difference, scientists believe, is to do with the amount of salt in the water the women drink – the increase of which is caused by climate change. When sea levels rise, salty sea water flows into fresh water rivers and streams, and eventually into the soil. Most significantly, it also flows into underground water stores – called aquifers – where it mixes with, and contaminates, the fresh water. It is from this underground water that villages source their water, via tube wells."

Amani Saeed is a London-born American-British-Indian-Middle-Eastern-etc. spoken word artist. She is a member of the poetry collective 'The Yoniverse' and has worked with the Roundhouse, the BBC, and the Huffington Post, among others. Amani's work brings the big issues to your kitchen table. She explores the crisis cultivated by living between sometimes (but not always) contradictory cultures, treading the line between masjid and mini skirt. Amani’s poetry has been described as 'electric,' 'strident,' and 'brave.' Her debut book of poetry, Split, was published in 2018 by Burning House Books.

"I’ve lived next to the Blackwall Approach (southside) for going on eight years. It’s a fixture in my life to the point that it’s become a fixture in my subconscious too. The traffic that flows overhead is constant, punctuated by occasional blue and red lights. The flow of cars is a regular reminder that the air is laced with engine exhaust.

Some fun facts:

Isn’t it ironic, how phallic tunnel digging is? Don’t you think?

More than 100,000 cars use the Blackwall Tunnel every day

Air quality is being linked to up to 40,000 deaths in the UK each year

The original tunnel, built in 1897, zig-zagged to stop horses from bolting to the end.

Roads are records of what came before – the streets that were truncated can’t be walked – they exist in memory, maps and deep dives into Internet ephemera.

The Blackwall Tunnel is considered to be one of the worst tunnels in Europe by commuters.

The 1970s expansion was sold as propaganda to the community with brochures promising utopian walkways and every kind of concrete finish.

What would our city look like if its design wasn’t dictated by the patriarchy?"

Megan Conery is a writer, artist and walker. Lives and works in South East London. Creating work that engages with movement, identity, distance and concepts of home. Publisher of the poetry magazine hotdog.

"Seats At Every Table is a series of illustrations that represent different women in the fight for climate justice, including a teenage activist, a conservationist, a farmer, and a politician. I chose to create a series of four illustrations to represent the varying and equally valuable perspectives of these women. From grassroots activists to policymakers, women’s voices are vital and yet they are grossly underrepresented. The women in Seats At Every Table each have powerful ideas, expertise, and skills. They represent women all over the world who are potential agents of change but are silenced by the patriarchy."

Kirstin Smith is a Canadian motion designer and illustrator based in London. After graduating from the Digital Design program at Vancouver Film School in 2015, Kirstin received an Adobe Design Achievement Award in the category of Social Impact Design and was a finalist in the category of Motion Graphics Design. She is driven by her belief that visual storytelling is a powerful tool and can be used to generate positive change. Over the past several years, Kirstin has been striving to do just that while working with organisations including Battersea Dogs & Cats, CNN, Do the Green Thing, Nesta, Historic England and World Wildlife Fund.

"I wanted to illustrate the devastating impact that climate change can have on the lives of those displaced through anthropogenic disasters.

Last year alone, 24 million people were displaced by weather-related disasters like floods and hurricanes. Statistics show that up to 80% of those affected were women. I wanted to demonstrate this disparity in my work, and so chose to create a diorama exemplifying the very real threat that climate change has on our homes and daily lives. This scene shows the quaint and charming furnishings of a living room set in a doll-like 1:15 scale, placed paradoxically in a desertscape, the encroaching harsh and arid environment creeping in. The small scale of the furniture is reminiscent of the type we would see in a dollhouse, though instead of a house we find this furniture in a barren and bleak desert. This may be the reality that our children’s futures will look like if we don’t act to prevent climate change now."

Jade Gerrard is a model maker and artist, born and raised in Northern England where she studied art and photography, she has been living and working in East London since 2014. Jade specialises in stop-motion puppet making for film and television, and has always had an interest in making tiny things.

"The intention of this piece is to highlight the patriarchal oppression facing women all around the world, whether in the workplace, the home or the street."

"In 2015 and 2019 two industrial explosions in Tianjin and Jiangsu were reported as earthquakes by the Chinese government.

With the development of the mobile internet and the boom of short videos, the explosions could no longer be censored were brought to light. The aforementioned news are examples of man-made incidents that occurred in China that became known to the public.

China will stop at nothing to continue to develop at incredible speeds and will use tactics that can cause the death of countless lives.

These 'earthquakes' deeply impact the environment. Toxic substances that are released from the explosions are harmful to the air, earth, and rivers. Besides the life that was taken by the explosions, countless women who live in this environment are affected. Their reproductive health, embryonic development, and physical health are all in jeopardy. Research shows women’s risk during a natural disaster is 14 times higher than men, so what would the figures be if it included man-made disasters? Of course, the answer is: even higher.

The decision makers, leaders and in most incidents’ initiators of these man-made earthquakes are mostly men. However, the 'earthquake' itself is muted.

Videos and pictures captured by the survivors went viral on the internet - the injured are bleeding, the shattered resident compounds, the brutal fire at the background...people screaming and crying amongst the explosions.

Just like every other incident news on the Chinese internet, all the posts and discussion boards are deleted, but people find a way to spread the word. News is made into pictures to avoid sensitive words and shared in chats and social media platforms.

I feel more and more unsafe and surrounded by danger. I can’t foresee when an unfortunate event will happen. The disasters are real, the censorship is real. We are so close to disasters; we are neighbours with death. We are only surviving for now.

Sadly, the survivors can’t commemorate the departed and the departed can’t be remembered.  Just a few days, all the voices online are replaced by other news. We have no right to discuss.  So, we forget.

Just like how we forgot about the polluted water, just like how we forgot about the toxic formula milk, just like how we forgot about the air pollution...just like how we forgot we have been hurt.

Now, because I am an artist, because I am a Chinese citizen, because I am a feminist, I want to express my concerns towards 'environment matters' that happen in China.

It’s a tragedy.

With my friends, with all the experiences we had in life, during the explosion incidents, on the internet, together we shall remember, experience, and reflect. We will visit the explosion site and perform as artists, as women, and as 'survivors'." - Li Maizi

Li Tingting (Chinese: 李婷婷), AKA Li Maizi (Chinese: 李麦子), is an activist for gender and LGBT equality. She was detained by police for 37 days on the eve of International Women's Day in 2015, along with four other activists, for protesting sexual harassment on public transport. She has led many of the group’s campaigns related to anti-discrimination, domestic violence, and biased policies towards women in higher education and employment. In 2012, she organised the 'Occupy Men’s Toilets' campaign in Beijing and Guangzhou to highlight the need for more women’s public restrooms. The campaign was lauded as a success in the state-run China Daily, and some of her other campaigns, including raising awareness of domestic violence and LGBT issues, have been profiled in state media. In 2015, she was recognised as one of Foreign Policy's one hundred global-thinkers, one of the BBC 100 women and one of the five Chinese Feminists listed in MS. Magazine Ten Most Inspiring Feminists. She was also short-listed for Trust Women Hero Award in 2015. She finished her Masters in Theory and Practice of Human Rights at the University of Essex.

A Lan (Chinese: 阿烂), was born in 1991. She is a painter, artist, short film director and feminist focusing on advocating for women's reproductive rights. A Lan lives in Beijing and has long been engaged in women's rights and women-empowerment campaigns.