In November, wildlife researchers made an announcement that was simultaneously exciting and saddening: exciting because they had discovered the first brand new species of great ape in about 100 years, the tapanuli orangutan, living in the Batang Toru forest of Sumatra, and sad because, with an estimated population of just around 800 living in the wild, it immediately became the most endangered great ape species in the world.
Not only is the tapanuli orangutan critically endangered, it is also under immediate threat due to the rapid expansion of palm oil plantations in their habitat. To highlight their plight, Splash and Burn, a creative initiative that uses art to campaign for environmental issues, recently teamed up with famed Portuguese street artist Vhils to create a mural in Medan, the capital city of North Sumatra, depicting the visage of one of the handsome great apes on the side of a building using Vhils signature chisel painting technique.
https://www.facebook.com/vhils1/posts/1713837608655412
Splash and Burn’s awareness campaign is specifically aimed at addressing the unregulated farming practices of palm oil in Indonesia, which has led to a host of huge environmental issues including the transboundary haze and deforestation caused by slash and burn farming (watch our documentary “Sumatra Burning” for a more in-depth look at the palm oil issue).
As summed up on the description of the mural of Vhils’ official website: Although the palm oil business is an essential part of the local economy, providing sustenance to various communities, the unregulated nature of this practice has had a widespread negative impact, leading to forest fires, deforestation, human displacement and a decrease in wildlife populations. Through a powerful lobby, the palm oil industry is taking advantage of the vulnerabilities of local communities, devastating native ecosystems to meet increasing global demand through unsustainable and unethical monoculture farming, leading to the destruction of lives and the environment.
Vhils, whose real name is Alexandre Farto, is a world-famous street artist whose appetite for experimentation and experience in the world of underground graffiti art led him to the chisel-painting technique he first used in his critically acclaimed “Scratching the Surface” project, first presented to the public in 2007.
His orangutan mural can be found at the SIB Majestyk Roundabout on Jalan Gatot Subroto in Medan.
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