Sails of Change, a foundation dedicated to the protection and regeneration of biodiversity, has launched an ‘Art for Nature’ programme, designed to support artists and projects which inspire the public to care for the environment.
“Art has the power to reconnect us to nature, and to inspire us to protect it,” said Sails of Change founder Dona Bertarelli. “We are proud to support art projects which engage the public on environmental issues, and which highlight nature’s vital role in supporting life on Earth.“
Dona Bertarelli is an executive producer of Deep Rising, a documentary by film-maker Matthieu Rytz which was selected from nearly 16,000 submissions for presentation at the Sundance Film Festival, currently taking place in Park City, Utah. The film, narrated by actor Jason Momoa, highlights the disastrous environmental consequences of large-scale, deep-sea mining.
“The ocean is home to over half the life on our planet. More than 95% of the biosphere is made up from the deep sea“, explained Matthieu Rytz (pictured).
Behind closed doors, the deep seabed, the largest carbon sink on our planet, is being sold off for profit and corporate gain, without consultation and without the necessary science to understand the environmental consequences that deep seabed mining would cause.
The fate of humanity is tightly linked to the health of the ocean,” said Dona Bertarelli. “The ocean drives the global systems that make Earth habitable for humankind. Given that climate change is the greatest threat the world has ever faced, and given the ocean’s importance to mitigate climate change, we need to stop, research, and reflect. Each country that commits to a pause in deep-sea mining gives us hope that an environmental disaster can still be avoided.”
Through its ‘Art for Nature’ activities, Sails of Change plans to engage art lovers and the art world on the need to protect and preserve the environment. In 2021, Dona Bertarelli and her husband, Yann Guichard, supported Corail Artefact, an exhibition by visual artist Jeremy Gobé held in Paris, which raised awareness of the need to preserve the ocean ecosystem. Also in 2021, Dona and Yann supported ‘Antarctica, The Greatest Sanctuary’, a public art exhibit organised in New York by Only One and SeaLegacy which revealed the beauty and fragility of the frozen South.