Protect Us (Polluted Waters)

Against a bruised gradient of sea and sky, the fish drift like fragile survivors, their stripes and fins rendered with quiet dignity while translucent plastic bags turn the water into a suffocating veil. Above, disembodied red hands hover in suspended complicity—neither rescuing nor releasing—so the composition becomes a moral tide line where human agency presses down on marine life. The cool blues and purples recede into a dreamlike depth, yet the sharp intrusions of synthetic debris fracture that serenity, transforming the ocean into a contested space between nourishment and negligence. What reads first as underwater calm slowly reveals itself as an elegy: a portrait of an ecosystem trying to breathe under the weight of our touch.