World Map Series, 2019, Mixed media on canvas, dimensions variable

Vibrant Repercussions Resonate Around the World: Diane Burko Paints the Changing Environment in Brilliant Color from the Amazon and Beyond

Interview by Olivia Ann Carye Hallstein

Diane Burko creates vibrant paintings and photographs that tell the harrowing story of our landscapes and people as the climate shifts and destructs. Based on maps, time lapse photographs, and on-site field work, she does her due-diligence to honor and truly understand the landscapes and people that are her subject. Though her focus is mainly in the Amazon, her message for collaborative activism, decolonialism, and environmental protection ring true for people throughout the world. Diane’s work truly exemplifies the intersection and power of art to speak to the spirit and foster attitudes toward change. She is currently exhibiting work in Madrid, Spain alongside other artists in the “The Greatest Emergency is the Absence of Emergency” show curated by Santiago Zabala until January 12, 2025.

Deforestation 1, 2021, mixed media on canvas, 42 x 42 inches

Diane, your work is location specific, but speaks to issues people are facing around the world. What is your approach on and off site? And how does it inform your artwork?

"Bearing witness” is an integral part of my practice - a totally crucial component. Physically experiencing & investigating a site of climate degradation, speaking with scientists and people who are from the land, experiencing these changes first-hand, is incredibly important to me. It is this practice that informs my work and provides it with authenticity & imbues it with a level of emotional intensity that I think can move people and allow them to connect with the factual as well as the aesthetic. I think this is what makes my work truly effective.

I visit places of climate degradation, take photos, notes, sketches, and most importantly, I take in the experience, really absorb it, and speak with people who study the landscape, conduct research, and live/work there. Then, I take those experiences home with me to my studio in Philadelphia, I let them marinate, and I make work. I paint, collage, manipulate organic material, and in that process, I let the canvas soak up everything I have absorbed.

Grinnell Mt. Gould #1, #2, #3, #4, 2009, oil on canvas, 88 x 200  inches overall, from Grinnell Mt. Gould series, painting of the glacier as it appeared four times in archival/USGS photographs from 1938 and 2006

Your description makes me think of the vibrancy and movement of your pre-and post-devastation landscapes, especially in your recent Amazon and Balbina series. How does time play out in your work?

I think that the motif of “pre-” and “post-” devastation in my work is a tool that brings a sober reality to many viewers. Some of these devastations happen so slowly that it is impossible to notice–summers get hotter, climate disasters more devastating, glaciers shrink–and it’s hard to grasp because we simply get used to it. I think that presenting these sites in both forms at one space and time can show viewers just what is happening, and how drastic the changes have been.

For example, I first worked within the tradition of “repeat photography” in the late 2000s, in a body of work that I showed in 2010 titled “Politics of Snow.” These works utilized glacial research and archival photographs. I focused on painting glaciers, and mountains as they’ve changed over time by contrasting them between the years. In those paintings, you see drastic changes–a disappearing landscape.

This kind of practice still informs my current work, but now I use more abstract representations of landscape and change–fields of color contrasted with borders, collaged headlines, articles, graphs, and images of devastation.

Amazon 25, 2024, mixed media on canvas, 20 x 20 inches

Your landscapes bridge multiple-dimensions and activism. Even using mapping to emphasize contrasts in the beauty and the destruction you describe. Do you consider mapping a political act? And how does it marry with art making?

Mapping is most certainly a political act! Maps play a crucial role in shaping the ways that we see the world - the colors, borders, symbols, what maps do and do not show – all that information is intentional. While they accurately display the world we live in, I want them to also imply the urgency of the climate crisis, the shrinking glaciers and rainforests, the disappearing reefs, as well as other issues. Their urgency, and their reality is important, and the use of maps in my work, especially in my World Map Series comes with the implication that we are all in this together.

Still from Diane Burko: World Map Series: From Glaciers to Reefs On Vimeo, 2019

That “we are all in this together” really resonates with the increasing call for art to be an activistic space integral to the effectiveness of climate policy and an informed public. Have you experienced public and policy shifts through art? And what seemed most effective in creating lasting change?

I certainly have, I think that, like I just mentioned, art has the capacity to empower the public, and I think many artists who are working now, and in the past have made it their goal to really reach out to the public and make empowering, informative work.

This makes me think about our efforts with FOCUS: featuring women artists in Philadelphia in 1974. And (re)FOCUS) this year, featuring black, brown, and indigenous women & gender non-conforming folks. Judy Brodsky and I, and many other talented individuals have been dedicated to these efforts, building these communities, and featuring stories that have been historically left out.

It’s hard to pinpoint exactly what is most effective, but it’s the sheer effort, the community building that I’ve seen and engaged in that has been most impactful in my experience. The networks of people working together, sharing their experiences with each other, and dedicating themselves to that practice of building and sharing and teaching each other is incredibly inspiring, and has compounded generationally.

Manaus/Meeting of the Waters, triptych, 2024, mixed media on canvas, 42 x 156 inches

What a fantastic reminder of how important community is while we navigate these times. And many of the conversations in these communities revolve around the repercussions of colonization and land exploitation that continue to today. What are your thoughts on the decolonial conversation in art?

Yes, my recent work is focused on the emergencies in the Amazon that have affected, and continue to affect, the landscape, and the indigenous populations of those regions, with widening ramifications for the whole planet.  The grid that is featured in this current group exhibition in Madrid deals with these issues of environmental degradation in the Amazon caused by the politics, greed, and extraction that are enacted world-wide. My goal is to continue the climate emergency conversation that impacts us all in the near future by featuring this work on an international level

These conversations about the dangers of deforestation and colonialism are at once local and global. So, traveling these works about the Amazon Rainforest to Spain (a former colonial power) is significant. It’s important that we look at these issues through multiple lenses. What happens in one space is a specific issue that has the capacity to affect the global climate. And it’s also part of a much larger pattern of colonialism and greed that affects us all, no matter where you are in the world. The destruction in the Amazon of both the landscape and the indigenous communities who steward the land represent this well. Chances are, something similar– some kind of local disruption to a natural landscape or indigenous population--is happening right under your nose.

Sharing these works and the decolonial conversation in art far and wide, is very important, especially in places that have complicated histories, and complex publics'.

Amazon Grid, Grid of 20 x 20 inch paintings on the Amazon; 2022-2024, mixed media on canvas, 60 x 120 inches

The exhibition you are referencing is in Spain and speaks of emergency prevention through artists who “rescue us in our greatest emergencies” before they become “emergencies”. What are your thoughts about your role as an artist in preventing these global climate-related emergencies?

I think that art has an incredible capacity to help “rescue us into our greatest emergencies” as Santiago Zabala has said in curating this exhibition. With all the media nowadays, it can feel impossible to keep up. Scientific data can become garbled, reports of non-stop disasters can be painful, and it can all become overwhelming to most. Many folks choose to look away in all of that overwhelm, and, well, it’s understandable.

I think art has a unique capacity to blend these emergencies with a more emotional experience, allowing viewers to open themselves to the emergency, really absorb that it is happening, and feel hope. I think that the beauty of art, its hopefulness is the perfect catalyst for change and empowerment, and empowerment is really what brings about change. The despair that I think most folks feel when watching a regular news report is not going to do that.

My work was actually featured in a research study that was then featured in this Hyperallergic article. My 2020 painting Summer Heat, was used in a study that demonstrated the way that the emotional components of art, the awe and the beauty, the visual communication can reach a broader public, and deepen their understanding of these issues in ways that classic avenues don’t.

Thank you, Diane, for your powerful work. The world needs these messages more than ever.