Displayed on Level 2, Fables for our Time is a triptych of stories about environmental urgencies, that uses folktales and a new collection of emoji to examine humanity’s relationship with the natural environment. Background Fables for our Time features three panels, each of which tells a particular story about an ecosystem that is vital to a thriving planet: the ecosystems of bees, coral and mushrooms. Each artwork in the display consists of three layers presented across 176 rotating prisms. The foreground layer is for storytelling, the midground depicts environments in friezes, and the background offers a glimpse of another world. The three moving scenes are presented as contemporary folktales, with narrators in the foreground advocating for the primacy of natural systems in the human story. From afar, the artworks show a meadow with flowers, mushrooms, or a coral reef. Up close, they reveal hundreds of icons representing ecosystems and human interactions, including elements that change, pollute, or mimic nature. Each of the panels is made up of hundreds of emoji in a mosaic-like pattern, or a pixellated form of cross-stitch embroidery. The emoji represent both natural systems and human ones, from cells and species to pesticides and waste. There is insect, plant and marine life alongside batteries, cigarette butts and Wi-Fi symbols. All have been designed specially for this commission.
