January 30, 2023
Assistant Professor of Art Studio, Clea Felien, has a solo exhibition at the Morris Graves Museum of Art January 27th - February 26th, 2023. Clea will be giving an artist talk on Sunday, February 5th at 2:00.
All of my work in my exhibition at the Morris Graves Museum is about the grounded Ever Given cargo ship. On 23 March 2021, the Ever Given ran aground in the Suez Canal. The Ever Given is the largest container ship in the world, it being stuck for 6 days, continues to be endlessly fascinating to me. The Ever Given can carry 20,000 containers, and it weighs over 219,000 tons. Fourteen tug boats were needed to dislodge it from the Suez Canal. It cost the global economy an average $10 billion dollars a day for the six days it was stuck in the Suez Canal, costing over $916 million in fees demanded by the government, and Egypt lost $90 million in toll revenue. To me the Ever Given illustrates humanity's unbridled greed and gluttony. For over 10 years my work has been about the untold destruction to the ocean from shipwrecks, financial cost from cargo that cannot get unloaded, and cargo lost as sea. The Ever Given being grounded in the Suez Canal is one of the most financially destructive cargo container moments in history, of course the cost of this loss of revenue will be paid for by us the consumer. - Clea Felien, Artist