How do you draw attention to the Earth's dwindling supply of Arctic Sea ice? Simple: slap a gigantic naked man on it.
What you're looking at is an enormous art installation piece, created by Greenpeace-funded artist John Quigley. But you won't find it in any museum; this massive reproduction of Leonardo DaVinci's iconic "Vitruvian Man" is tethered to a sheet of ice floating just 500 miles from the North Pole.
According to Greepneace's website, the goal of the piece—which is constructed from flattened pieces of copper usually used to construct solar pannels—is to draw attention to how climate change is causing the rapid melting of sea ice to outpace predictions.
We came here to create the "Melting Vitruvian Man", after da Vinci's famous sketch of the human body, because climate change is literally eating into the body of our civilisation. When he did this sketch it was the Enlightenment, the Renaissance, the dawn of this innovative age that continues to this day, but our use of fossil fuels is threatening that.
[Spotted on inhabitat]
Top image by Nick Cobbing via Greenpeace