Vida Pavesich

Vida Pavesich makes digital collages based on her photographs of children, forests, oceans, sunsets, polluted environments, and more. She teaches philosophy at the University of San Francisco and maintains an art practice. She has been profoundly affected by teaching environmental ethics the past few years. She relished diving into the literature, not knowing how much it would disturb her, or how it would inform her art making and her understanding of the human place in the world in the age that is now called the “Anthropocene.” She has a PhD in philosophy from the University of California, San Diego, and coursework sufficient for a BFA from California State University East Bay [when it was called Cal State Hayward] plus many courses over the years in photography.

Through her digital collages, Vida Pavesich explores the “Anthropocene,” the possibly new geological age brought about by human behavior that inadvertently has affected the planetary boundaries necessary to sustain life as we have known it. She takes photos of mummies in a museum, beautiful forests, lush wetlands, botanical gardens, sunsets during fire seasons, oceans, children playing on the beach, refuse floating in lakes, city dumps, and more as she grapples with what it means to be human during a time that challenges the integrity of environments our species has taken for granted. When children play, they might be playing in the aftereffects—the “slow violence”—of climate change or toxic dumping. They may be playing close to the edge of a natural disaster in the making. Everything is interconnected, whether we see, hear, or smell it. It all seeps into the environment and is passed on to new generations. Where are we? Where are we going? What choices will we make?