Fleet

The shipping of goods around the world is continually increasing, especially since the onset of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. If you don’t live in a port city such as Seattle, it’s hard to imagine the enormity of commerce and its impacts. Mary Iverson’s artwork raises questions about the consequences of the growing consumerism, particularly how carbon footprints of the shipping industry contribute to climate change. Fleet illustrates a post-apocalyptic vision of what rising sea levels would look like in our cities. In the depicted great flood, a group of stranded container ships (the backbone of today’s global trade) are floating around, calling attention to consumerism and its huge impacts on climate change.