Emel Cevikcan
The Sadness After The Tsunami
Emel Cevikcan is a Fine Arts graduate of Marmara University. The presented artwork is a 35 x 50 cm-sized watercolor. Our world is under great threat and we despise our beloved world so much that a day goes by so that a flood disaster is not a hurricane or an earthquake or a tsunami disaster. In this picture, I tried to explain the desperation experienced after the tsunami.
Artist Statement
By observing the details of everyday surroundings, I find endless ideas from Nature. Working with watercolor has always been the choice for me because it flows from the brush and is never the same application.
In our day, when time flows very rapidly when we can look at everything with a short break, inspired by art and based on the joy of life it gives, love in my paintings. Sharing. I try to convey our amazing transformation with nature to people with the language of colors and forms. Art and nature are the basis of our existence. Life without art is like a desert without water. In these days when the pandemic has kept people away from each other, I think that the only element that allows us to reproduce life is that we should be inspired by realizing the works of art. Replicates. Converts. It overcomes the obstacles and enables us to exist.
Curator's Comments
Did you know that, being a brainchild of Japan, World Tsunami Awareness Day falls on the 05th of Nov each year since 2015? In December 2015, the UN General Assembly designated this day as World Tsunami Awareness Day, and UN Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) facilitates the observance of World Tsunami Awareness Day in collaboration with the rest of the United Nations system.
Tsunamis are rare events and initially typically unrelated to climate change as they’re caused by natural phenomena such as earthquakes, submarine landslides, or volcano eruptions and they create a series of enormous waves created by an underwater disturbance. As sea levels rise however due to climate change, so do the global hazards and potential devastating damages from tsunamis. As this poses greater risks of tsunamis for coastal communities worldwide calling on countries, World Tsunami Awareness Day calls upon all international bodies and civil society to raise tsunami awareness and share innovative approaches to risk reduction as global temperatures and sea levels rise. Despite their low probability of occurrence, their catastrophic consequences surpass any other natural hazard with death tolls reaching as high as 4,600 per disaster, on average. It is estimated that 50 % of the world's population will live in coastal areas by 2030, which makes the task to boost global efforts to strengthen tsunami preparedness and deliver rapid adaptation for coastal areas around the world as pressing as ever.
As any other climate changed increased risk factor, it is accompanied by many other collateral damages such as loss of food systems and agricultural land. Tsunamis don’t only carry the sea water sediments far inland, but also salt itself, which causes great damage to agricultural land and the crops. Saline soils have poor or little crop production, so the effects of tsunamis can be long-lasting and detrimental to the entire food system of coastal regions.