Anthropohubris
This series reflects N.K.'s hunger to absorb the interplay between humans and their environment. By exploring our impact on other members of Earth’s global family, by tying together the impact on our shared ecosystems, and the impact on our fellow humans.
Hubris is often defined as violating the natural order in a way that creates a victim to the pleasure of an abuser. N.K. focuses not on the hubris of individuals, but the hubris of the collective modern human systems that value complacency and comfort. The victims of these systems, setup by our society’s most influential actors, are entire communities of people and the ecosystems that support us all.
Primarily employing traditional painting mediums, N.K. seeks to combine familiar figurative imagery with abstracted symbolic forms, conveying a comfort interrupted by a creeping sense of the presence of a violation of the natural. Whether from pigment and binder, metal, textile, plastic, wood or clay, they hope to grant the viewer a perspective that the traits we should value most in humanity are traits that honor and empower, not just our siblings, but our home planet and all of our cousins who reside here.
Nathan K. Godbey is a Fleer student and senior, majoring in both Biology and Visual and Performing Arts (concentration in Studio Arts). They are pursuing a career in STEAM education and aim to employ the arts in improving science literacy, and vice versa. He is active in the local arts community and creates works and murals aimed at reflecting the ecological impacts of daily life.