A climate activist smeared pink paint on a Tom Thomson artwork at the National Gallery of Canada as part of activities this week drawing attention to demands for a national firefighting service.
A video uploaded to Facebook by the group On2Ottawa appears to show Kaleb Suedfeld, 28, splashing paint onto Thomson’s 1915 landscape Northern River, kneeling and gluing his hand onto the floor before pulling a written speech from his pocket.
“Fossil fuel industries are destroying the work of art that is our planet and our government is firmly in their grip, doing nothing to stop their crimes,” Suedfeld said, before citing the damage forest fires have caused across the country this year, with thousands of people evacuated, the deaths of four firefighters, as well as an estimated at 37 million acres burned. “We are shocked that the governments around the world, including our own, are allowing our beautiful planet, this work of art, to be gutted and burned to fuel the pockets of fossil fuel plutocrats.”
Northern River is protected by glass, and On2Ottawa spokesperson Laura Sullivan confirmed to ARTnews that the pink paint used in the incident is washable.
On2Ottawa describes itself as a “non-violent civil disobedience campaign designed to encourage Canadian governments to take urgent and meaningful action on the climate crisis.” The climate group is demanding the Canadian federal government establish a national firefighting service of 50,000 members to deal with the growing issue of forest fires. The group also wants to establishes a citizens’ assembly with “legally-binding power to decide how to tackle the climate and ecological crisis in less than 2 years.”
