I exhibited this triptych (pigments on paper, 31 x 31 cm each, 2021) in the 2022 edition of Artea Oinez, the annual fund-raising art exhibition organized on behalf of the ikastola movement in favour of Basque-language schools in Navarre. It is part of a series of paintings to which I have given the title "The Fire Next Time".
The title is taken from a black slave’s song lyric which refers to God's warning to human beings that, having been saved from the flood, as witnessed by the sign of the rainbow that God gave to Noah, they will suffer the punishment of fire if they persist in the way of sin.
“God gave Noah the rainbow sign
No more water, the fire next time...”
Writer James Baldwin used this phrase as the title of a 1963 book of two essays on racism in the United States.
In my case, I wanted to refer to the forest fires of the past two years and the ecological disasters that threaten us amid the current climate crisis. The same words evoke the disasters of Russia’s war against Ukraine.
