Mobilizing Artists: Green Patriot Posters,Visual Metaphors,and Climate Change Activism

This essay examines the Canary Project's Green Patriot Posters campaign as activist art that collectively comments on the cultural coherence of our current relations to the environment, particularly in terms of global warming, sustainability, and the concept of linear economic growth. Aspiring to bring together artists under the eco-activist umbrella, the Canary Project relies on an old WWII-inspired frame with a narrow premise of that period's conservation efforts. Within this framework, a range of visual designs question, subvert, and promote continued economic growth and an ontology that “more” equals “better.” An analysis of the up–down orientational metaphors underscores a typology of these valuations and reveals one way to assess implications of such artistic efforts. That is, artistic expressions adapt and play with the contingent nature of metaphors, offering elaborations, extensions, and alternatives on basic structural elements and, hence, remark on how we orient ourselves and productively imagine being of/in the world anew.