This painting demonstrates Husam Din’s thoughtful analysis of the play and careful attention to artistic choices. By using the trees in the foreground to symbolize Caliban and Prospero, Din is able to show how Prospero’s prosperity comes at the expense of Caliban’s ability to thrive. As he writes, “without the dead tree providing the lively tree with nutrients, the large lush tree cannot survive.” While illustrating Prospero’s relationship to Caliban, this image also calls to mind what Rob Nixon terms the “slow violence” of environmental devastation in oppressed communities.

This painting also communicates, as the reflection makes clear, how Prospero’s power only appears all-encompassing because we cannot see beyond it. In this way, Din’s painting complicates traditional understandings of Prospero’s power of illusion, while expanding his critique of power dynamics to the world beyond the play.

Read Husam Din’s reflection here.

This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license.