This past month, ASC-ASA Liaison Elsa Olander participated in The Stamps School’s annual Undergraduate Juried Exhibition, which showcased the outstanding work of Stamps undergraduates.
Olander’s artwork, “Worth More than Their Heads,” was created using tea, coffee, gold, and silver acrylic paints, charcoal, and chalk on newspapers. She drew portrait illustrations of ‘The Big Five’ wild animals in Kenya to draw attention to the pressures that these animals face with the growing encroachment of their habitats.
She described the purpose behind her art as,
“The Cape buffalo, leopard, lion, rhino, and African elephant are known as the ‘Big Five’ not because of their speed, size, beauty, or weight, but rather because of the danger and difficulty of hunting for them on foot. Game hunters prize the heads of the animals, not to feed their families like native hunters but to show their prowess as men. This is why I choose to draw head portraits of these beautiful and challenged animals.
African tour companies use them as tourist attractions, but for me, they are a part of my upbringing. Each of these portraits tells its own stories but shares a commonality of being poached for their tusks, skin, or prized trophy heads. Now, they are all threatened animals due to poaching and the environmental pressures of humans encroaching into their habitats, stripping away their freedom to live. The charcoal draws attention to the negative effects of deforestation, burning of the wood, and release of harmful CO2 into the atmosphere with global effects. Tea and coffee as toners highlight their importance to the economy of Kenya, the country of my ancestors, who valued the animals of the wild, and the earth that they shared.”
This is not Elsa Olander’s first time being featured at a Stamp’s School exhibition! In 2022, her work was displayed along with 4 others for the Respond, Resist, Rethink, Stamp’s student poster exhibition.
