Art for climate education and adaptation
February 2017 Susan installed Rising Waters on the San Blas Islands (Kuna Yala) in Panama with community participation and a children’s art workshop. The water on the community island in San Blas (Kuna Yala) already comes up to the center of the island when tides are highest. The San Blas are very flat, low lying islands, made of coral atolls, which are predicted to be uninhabitable in 20 years. Roughly 20-40,000 Kuna people will need to relocate to mainland before then. The Panama installation was the first of a series of international installations focusing on small island states who are being impacted in the near term. Each installation is being documented with photographs and videos, creating a series that tells the story of sea level rise and other flooding impacts of climate change, including climate migrations. An exhibition of photographs from the San Blas installation were shown at the United Nations for the Oceans Conference, 2017.