Climate and health activist has been immortalised in a sculpture, The Solomon Siren – recently installed on her now-flooded former home: Kale Island in the Solomon Islands.
Rising tides completely flooded the 50,000-square-metre Pacific island in 2016. The sculpture sits in the intertidal zone, where patches of rubble and sand rise above the ocean surface from time to time.
Sculptor Jason deCaires Taylor made the sculpture as part of his Sirens series of installations around the world highlighting warming seas, sewage pollution and the presence of microplastics.
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When flooding made life untenable, Bartlett and her family had to evacuate to one of the main islands. “Back then, [the island] was land – green, vibrant, full of life,” says Bartlett in a film accompanying the sculpture’s installation. “Kale became one of the first documented islands in the Solomons lost to sea level rise.”
The sculpture consists of a marine-grade stainless steel tree on which a life-sized figure of Bartlett leans. The artwork also uses biochar and pH-neutral cement. Hauntingly, as the tide rises and falls, it is intermittently hidden as waves roll over.
Incorporated into the sculpture are inscriptions recording past milestones of Kale’s submergence along with predictions for a sea level rise of up to 20 centimetres by 2046. But as Taylor says, the sculpture isn’t intended to work as a scientific measuring instrument, but as a “symbolic representation” of a changing relationship between land and sea.
“What happened is a warning not only for us, but for the world,” says Bartlett.
