THE human flood
american university museum at the katzen arts center
February 7–August 11, 2024
The Human Flood, a site-specific collaborative installation conceived and created by Ellyn and Sondra N. Arkin, is focused on the mass migration of human populations caused by climate change that is underway. Years of extreme heat, flooding, wildfires, and drought have made the environments in which millions of people live no longer able to sustain human life. The installation evokes the more visible markers of this movement—extreme weather and nomadic refugee scenarios—and also the human and societal impacts of uprooting, including the fracturing of family ties, uncertainty, poverty, and helplessness. It confronts the full experience of leaving a life behind upon migration and starting a new one elsewhere
