10 portraits, various media on watercolor paper, 14″ x 9″ each
There is a scientific phenomenon known as the Butterfly Effect. It designates a condition in which certain effects seem to be greatly disproportionate to the causes from which they originate. It got its name when meteorologist Edward Lorenze, one of the founders of chaos theory, concluded that chaos was analogous to a situation in which the flapping of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil sets in motion a cascade of events that results in a tornado in Texas.
Genocide is a reoccurring theme that spans human existence. Despite commitments by world leaders of “Never Again,” and despite the advent of worldwide communication and technology that gives us instant images of its presence, genocide continues today. Is there any stopping it? What is it that is inside us (or not inside us) that makes it – or lets it – happens?
My work is not an attempt to answer these questions. Instead, it asks us to consider, and reconsider, age-old questions like these, not to understand others, but to understand ourselves. There is, after all, the Butterfly Effect.