Symbiosis

By: Linglin Tu

This intaglio print work is titled “Symbiosis,” yet its meaning is deliberately ironic. The blurred boundary between the forest and the industrialized city reveals a seemingly integrated but fundamentally unbalanced form of “symbiosis.” It suggests how urban development quietly permeates and consumes ecosystems that were once distant and self-sustaining. In the composition, towering trees and cranes intertwine like a skeleton, rigid geometric buildings, pipes, and mechanical systems snake through the ground like substituted roots, three small animals wearing gas masks symbolize the impact of environmental destruction on all forms of life. This art work invite viewers to reconsider the complex tension between development and ecology, as well as our own place and responsibility within this distorted notion of “symbiosis.”