This master class focuses on the creaon of a detailed animal mask which will contribute to on-line exhibition Faces of Extinction. This project aims to help raise awareness of the huge challenges to wildlife across the world, and of imminent natural network collapse.
Today wildlife accounts for only 3 percent of earth’s land animals; human beings, our livestock, and our pets take up the remaining 97 percent of the biomass. This is due both to the explosion of industrial agriculture and to a hollowing out of wildlife itself, which has decreased in abundance by as much as 50 percent since 1970. This cull is from both direct hunting and global-scale habitat destrucon: almost half of the earth’s land has been converted to farmland (source: PeterBrannen, The Ends of the World ).
Faces of Extinction is an international community art project & on-line exhibition that aims to draw attention to the impact of human activity on ecosystems and habitats, and the increased rate of species loss that is one of the results. Faces of Extinction occupies a dedicated web page, Instagram site and Facebook page, and all images share a disnct set of guidelines to encourage visual unity.
All animals chosen have to be picked from the IUCN Red List for Threatened Species ( hps://www.iucnredlist.org/ ) and all student parcipants will be asked to do some research on their chosen animal, as well as prepare a sign containing some basic wrien facts (more informaon on this is provided in the Student Materials List).