Seeing the World Whole: A New Vision for Climate and Culture
Posted on 14.04.2025
How the British Council Malaysia’s Human-Nature Programme unites artists, scientists, and Indigenous knowledge to reshape the future
Thank you to Eksentrika arts & culture community and Asian arts magazine for permission to repost this article.
Breaking the Divide
For too long, we’ve seen the world through a lens of division—nature apart from humanity, art separate from science, tradition at odds with progress. In pursuit of control, we’ve reduced the planet to a resource, something to be extracted rather than understood, dissected rather than lived with. This way of thinking, though convenient, has come at a great cost. Climate change, deforestation, pollution — these aren’t just environmental disasters. They are cultural crises, born of the same rigid vision that fueled colonial conquests.
But the earth doesn’t follow such rules, and Indigenous communities have long understood this. Despite comprising about 5% of the global population, Indigenous peoples are responsible for stewarding significant portions of the Earth’s natural landscapes. Their knowledge isn’t a relic of the past but a wisdom that might yet guide us in the future.
Connecting Human-Nature
With this in mind, the British Council Malaysia has launched the Human-Nature programme. Among the many forces driving this ambitious endeavour are the delegates, seven individuals — artists, thinkers, and disruptors — who know that tackling the biggest crisis of our time takes more than just one way of seeing the world.
Among them are Invisible Dust Artistic Director Alice Sharp, cultural producer Kim Wide, artist Alysha Nelson, and researcher Marenka Thompson-Odlum, whose work merges art, history, and technology to show us that a different future is not only possible but necessary.
Science Seen Through Art
Alice Sharp, the founder of Invisible Dust, believes that the climate crisis cannot be solved by science alone.
School and education, I think, often encourage us from an early age to think of ourselves as either one or the other. But the reality is, many scientists are incredibly creative, and many people in the arts are deeply interested in science.
Alice Sharp, Invisible Dust
Her projects bring scientists and artists together, using creativity to make environmental issues visible in ways data alone cannot.
One of her standout pieces is the Breathe: 2022 project, where artist Dryden Goodwin painted portraits of Rosamund Adoo-Kissi-Debrah. Her nine-year-old daughter became the first person in the United Kingdom (UK) to have air pollution officially recognised as a cause of death.
One of those portraits, focusing on her breathing, was projected along the heavily polluted South Circular Road. The campaign reached 13 million people across the UK.
Art as a Call to Action
In October 2024, the project was revisited in Pakistan as part of the Lahore Biennale. At the time, Lahore was experiencing one of its worst air pollution days of the year, as seasonal smog from crop burning pushed air quality to hazardous levels. Scientific reports even ranked it the most polluted city in the world at that moment. The concentration of pollutants in the atmosphere was around 207.1 µg/m³ which is 41.4 times higher than the annual air quality guideline set up by the World Health Organisation (WHO).
Sharp shared that Goodwin’s depiction of Abid Omer, founder of Pakistan Air Quality Initiative (PAQI پاکی) deeply resonated with people.
“Imagine people driving through Lahore, seeing an air pollution activist displayed on posters and nighttime projections across the city. It truly resonated—here was someone taking a stand, highlighting an issue people wanted to change, but in a way that (wasn’t a directive) and connected on a human level,” said Sharp.
“I think people react very badly, particularly on environmental issues, if they’re told what to do. What we want is to inspire—helping them understand the issues so they can find their own conclusions and solutions. I think that’s very, very important,” she added.
Kim Wide, CEO & Artistic Director of Take A Part, sums it up well: “If you’re trying to change a neighborhood, bring in artists. When you do, new conversations happen, and more people get involved. A town hall on road safety might pull in the usual crowd of community members who are already familiar with local authorities. But throw in some street dancing, and now you’ve got families and kids in the mix, which opens the door to real dialogue.”
Dismantling Hierarchies
Months after returning from the Human-Nature Programme, multimedia artist Alysha Nelson completed Collective Dreamscape, an immersive installation at Oxford University.
Blending projection mapping, ambisonic audio, and the recorded voice of Amak Roba, an elder from the Bhuket community in Sarawak, the project wove Indigenous oral histories into a soundscape with generative visuals. Nelson wanted to explore how Indigenous cosmologies challenge colonial perceptions of time, nature, and consciousness — breaking down binaries between natural and supernatural, past and present, real and imagined.
I think art has the power to disrupt dominant narratives — to challenge what we call progress and whether it’s worth the destruction it leaves behind.
Artist Alysha Nelson
“It can also reframe sustainability, not as a Western intervention, but as something deeply embedded in Indigenous and ancestral knowledge. Art can inform, but it should also unsettle,” she said.
Nelson recalled an audience member saying they didn’t need subtitles—a response that stood out to her: “It just broke through all the barriers and went straight to the emotional core.”
Nelson describes her artistic practice as non-hierarchical, built on co-authorship and participation.
“I didn’t feel like I was the artist—I was a co-author. It was a conversation, much like the one we’re having now. The experience was designed so that people didn’t just observe; they stepped into the space and became part of it.”
She sees her installation as a different kind of protest—one that fosters healing as much as action. “We need spaces to regulate our nervous systems, to heal, and to find the emotional bandwidth to imagine new futures. Where do we go from here? What is our past? How do we connect the lines? That’s what this project was for me.”
Honouring Diverse Knowledge
Thompson-Odlum combs through historical records like an archaeologist sifting through ruins, exposing the bones of colonial systems—who built them, who named them, and who they served. Her aim isn’t to erase the past but to reveal it as it truly is—unvarnished and unflinching.
She explained how colonialism shaped social structures, influencing social and labour hierarchies. It also influenced which knowledge systems were prioritised, shaping education, research, and language use.
“Mainstream academic traditions often prioritised scientific reasoning, overlooking Indigenous perspectives that don’t fit conventional definitions of ‘proof,’” she said.
Decolonisation, she pointed out, takes many forms. It’s not just about European powers like Britain or America; colonialism persists internally, within nations and systems, because at its core, it’s a tool of power. Yet, the term itself is often misunderstood.
“Some see it as academic, something for conferences and debates. But it’s not just theory—it’s in how our cities are built, how history is taught, and whose voices get amplified or silenced. It’s like pollution—you may not always see it, but it’s there.”
Embracing Pluriversality
Ask Thompson-Odlum how to untangle the mess of colonial legacies, and she doesn’t give you a neat, packaged answer. Instead, she points to pluriversality—a theory out of South America that ditches the idea of a single, universal truth. The world isn’t just one story told in one voice. It’s a cacophony of perspectives, each as real and valid as the next.
She doesn’t claim to have all the answers. But she does have a rule: listen.
“When you actually listen to the people, the cultures, the communities you work with, you start to understand what it means to belong to a place—to know it, not just exist in it. And for me, everything connects back to the natural world.”
That understanding runs through projects like Forever Sabah, which is working to keep Indigenous communities as stewards of their own land—and ensure they benefit from it.
“What stood out to me was the approach. In building hydroelectric projects, chasing clean energy, but instead of bulldozing over people in the name of progress, there’s an effort to bring them in. To recognize that they’re not obstacles—they’re part of the solution,” she said.
Collaboration, Not Separation
We’ve spent too much time building walls between things that were never meant to be divided — art from science, people from the natural world. But as Alice Sharp of Invisible Dust puts it, “the future demands a new way of thinking.”
The United Nations (UN) has recognised that Indigenous communities must be central to global climate solutions. And scientists? They’re starting to get it too, teaming up with artists to make their research resonate. The divide is breaking down, and in its place, something more powerful is emerging: innovation fueled by imagination.
Real change isn’t just about science or art—it’s about seeing the world whole.