Philipstown painter exhibits at U.N. climate conferences
The United Nations Climate Change Conference, or COP, has many offshoots and strands, one of them the arts. For Selva Ozelli, making, displaying and curating work, mostly related to the threat to oceans from carbon emissions, is a way for her to get people thinking.
The Philipstown resident comes to this in atypical ways. She’s a certified public accountant who specializes in international taxation, but is also a painter. She comes from a family of writers and artists and began painting as a child, eventually specializing in portraits, then adding nature.
Ozelli, who is of Turkish heritage, lived in New York City most of her life but moved to the Highlands about a year ago for family reasons. She says she is enjoying the opportunity to paint outdoors more freely.
During the early days of the pandemic, with time on her hands, Ozelli submitted her art to contests. She won one, then pitched her paintings for exhibits and soon had her work on display.
From Ozelli’s Healing Water series
Ozelli says she was interested from the start in finding a connection between COVID-19 and climate change. “Pollution has a negative impact on health,” she says, noting that scientists have examined the relationship between air pollution and COVID deaths. Ozelli has focused on oceans because “they absorb most of the carbons in the air.”
With museums closed during the pandemic shutdown, Ozelli began sharing her work through digital art shows on video. “We found there was a long list of museums interested in showing the work, and it all organically fell into place.”
At the beginning of the lockdown, the U.N. and the World Health Organization issued an open call for artwork about COVID-19. Ozelli saw the announcement in Artnet News and “quickly made 16 portraits of my childhood friends, in case we did not survive.”
All 16 were selected, which opened doors for them to be displayed at U.N. conferences and online by institutions such as the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
Ozelli’s first Climate Change Conference was COP26 (the acronym stands for Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, plus the number of the annual meeting) in 2021. She was invited to participate in COP27 and COP28. She says she selects the topic of her art based on the issues that will be discussed and the country where the conference takes place.
From Ozelli’s Orcas and Reefs series
For COP28 she and four friends and colleagues — Fatma Kadir, Mehmet Sinan Kuran, Gunsu Saracoglu and Ilhan Sayin — prepared a show called The Future of Power.
“Three of us are oil painters, one is a mixed-media artist and one works with ink on paper,” she says. “Everybody picks a topic that has to do with climate change. For example, one person focused on pollution’s impact on birdlife.”
The group exhibited the art at two pavilions at COP28, which was held in Dubai from Nov. 30 to Dec. 12.
Next summer, beginning Aug. 10, Ozelli will keep things local, curating a seven-week show called Pink & Blue at the Howland Cultural Center in Beacon. The show will tie together the art created by the group of five with that of mostly local photographers Lori Adams, Ross Corsair, Cali Gorevic, Zinnia Gutowski, Ian Hutton, Annette Solakoglu and Jane Soodalter.
On the main level, the artists will display their oil paintings in a 30-by-30-inch format. The photographers’ work will line the second story. All will create art based on the title, which evokes pink polluted skies and blue, clean sky, and the fact that particles in the air that create the colors can reflect something ominous.
The Beacon show will coincide with New York Climate Week and the U.N. General Assembly. The artist group intends to make a video of the Howland show and exhibit at COP29, which will take place in 2024 in Baku, Azerbaijan, on the Caspian Sea.
To see more of the artwork from The Future of Power, visit bit.ly/future-power.
