The Sad Polar Bear

The Sad Polar Bear belongs to the Stories series, and it is, in many ways, where the series began.

It started as something intimate: a story to tell to grandchildren. A way to explain, gently, what is happening to a world they are inheriting. The polar bear figurine - small, white, undeniably cute, the kind of creature that lives in childhood bedrooms as a soft toy - sits on a cluster of glass pebbles in warm amber and green tones, the last remnant of solid ground. Around it, deep blue resin spreads across the entire surface of the tray: the Arctic Ocean, vast and advancing, where ice used to be.

The bear does not roar. It contemplates. It sits at the edge of what remains and looks out at what has been lost: a shrinking habitat, a rising sea, a future made uncertain by forces entirely outside its understanding.

The vintage Bohemian crystal tray, found in a Prague market, round and luminous, holds the scene like a world seen from above, or from a great distance. Its clarity amplifies the blue. The pebbles beneath the bear catch the light like the last warm stones of a disappearing shore.

This was the first work in the Stories series. It began as a children's story and became something else, or perhaps it was always both. It was this piece that curator Fortunato D'Amico recognised as worthy of a wider audience, bringing it into my solo exhibition at MyOwnGallery, SuperStudio Più, Milan.