Perhaps, precisely because there are still those who prefer to deny the evidence and live in their particular fantasy, climate change is becoming El Coco of Greta Thunberg 's generation: an ominous presence that forces us to imagine death and destruction apocalyptic futures, in those who half the world will be under water and the other half world will be fighting to survive in a hostile environment. In some way or another, we must be scared of that possible future, because it is already known that fear is the great engine of change. And we need a big change.
But the polite does not take away the brave and, seriously, is it necessary to be so catastrophic and only think of dark colors? Hayden Clay Williams doesn't think so. In fact, a trip to Venice brought him into contact with a whole set of infrastructures prepared to face the rise in sea level. And that forced him to imagine what other places in the world would be like that, in one way or another, lived in the fantasy mentioned above and did not have the infrastructure of the Italian city. Curiously, the artist did not fantasize about the universal flood and eternal night, but rather began to think about how beauty is the only thing that often remains after the disaster.
This line of thinking is not strange at all if Williams' trajectory is known. Most of his career has been devoted to photography, a field in which he has dedicated himself to work on the overexposure of different images always prioritizing the color palette of roses and violets, something that always brings a touch of retro-futuristic romanticism. Now, this artist from Frederick (Maryland) often states that, when you can't turn to photography to capture an image because it doesn't exist in reality, that's when you turn to 3D. And that's where his World Underwater comes into play, a series of renderings that show a world submerged under water where there is no room for darkness, but for serenity and beauty. Or is that not what will be left once climate change raises the waters and sweeps humans from earth's face?
