{"id":389,"date":"2026-08-02T20:26:15","date_gmt":"2026-08-03T00:26:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/arts-in-new-york-salois-summer-2026\/?p=389"},"modified":"2026-08-02T20:26:38","modified_gmt":"2026-08-03T00:26:38","slug":"isabella-castillo-protest-art","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/arts-in-new-york-salois-summer-2026\/2026\/08\/02\/isabella-castillo-protest-art\/","title":{"rendered":"Isabella Castillo – Protest Art"},"content":{"rendered":"

For this collage, I wanted to bring attention to pollution and how it affects people, animals, and the environment. The whole piece is built around one question: \u201cWho Suffers?\u201d because pollution is not just some far-off problem happening to \u201cthe planet.\u201d It affects real living things that need clean air, clean water, and a healthy environment just to survive.<\/p>\n

This topic is personal to me. I grew up visiting the Dominican Republic, and the beach has always been one of my favorite places in the world. However, there is a lot of pollution there, and I have noticed that there are not always strong protections for public land. Sometimes, people with more resources are able to buy land and turn it into private spaces for profit, while the environmental consequences remain for communities and the public to deal with. Growing up seeing these issues made environmental pollution feel real to me instead of something that only existed in articles or discussions.<\/p>\n

I chose \u201cWho Suffers?\u201d as the title because I noticed that people often think about pollution as only a nature problem, only a human problem, or only an animal problem, rather than understanding how all three are connected. I wanted the question to encourage viewers to think beyond one group and consider the larger impact of pollution.<\/p>\n

The article I read, \u201cWhat Do You See?\u201d from De Nichols\u2019 Art of Protest, played a big role in shaping my design. It discusses how images can communicate ideas beyond what is immediately visible and how protest art encourages people to look deeper and question issues they may normally overlook. This idea influenced my approach because I did not want to show pollution only as an environmental issue; I wanted viewers to think about who is actually affected by it. That is why I included images of plastic waste, polluted water, air pollution, and animals. These images are meant to make people stop and ask themselves who truly suffers because of these problems.<\/p>\n

I created the collage digitally using images from Wikimedia Commons. I also included a few small messages throughout the piece for viewers to discover if they look closely instead of placing everything directly on the surface.<\/p>\n

If I had more time or materials, I would have preferred to create this collage by hand instead of digitally. I enjoy physical artwork, and I think a handmade version would have made the piece feel more personal and added textures that a digital collage cannot fully recreate.<\/p>\n

\"Protest<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For this collage, I wanted to bring attention to pollution and how it affects people, animals, and the environment. The whole piece is built around one question: \u201cWho Suffers?\u201d because pollution is not just some far-off problem happening to \u201cthe planet.\u201d It affects real living things that need clean air, clean water, and a healthy … Continue reading Isabella Castillo – Protest Art<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":971,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"portfolio_post_id":0,"portfolio_citation":"","portfolio_annotation":"","openlab_post_visibility":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-389","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog-post-6"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/arts-in-new-york-salois-summer-2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/arts-in-new-york-salois-summer-2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/arts-in-new-york-salois-summer-2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/arts-in-new-york-salois-summer-2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/971"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/arts-in-new-york-salois-summer-2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=389"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/arts-in-new-york-salois-summer-2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":391,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/arts-in-new-york-salois-summer-2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389\/revisions\/391"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/arts-in-new-york-salois-summer-2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=389"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/arts-in-new-york-salois-summer-2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=389"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/arts-in-new-york-salois-summer-2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=389"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}