A profoundly proactive and environmentally engaged artist, Louis Masai’s work touches on poignant endangerment issues, questioning our relationship to the wildlife we share our earth with.
In his latest exhibition, aptly titled, Missing, Masai will be showing a selection of brand new works, each with a specific continent focus through an animal endangered in that region, those that will soon be ‘missing’ from our biodiversity.
From graffiti to canvas, Masai’s patchwork animals are created with a genuine passion and respect for animals in the wild, from the South African penguin to the humble bumble bee. As a painter, sculptor and muralist, Masai uses his work as a way to highlight the 6 th mass extinction, climate change and species equality. Current works deal with endangered species, created into patchwork plush toys and stitched up by bees, highlighting the need for humans to pay more attention to what is happening in nature and start stitching the planet up rather than unpicking it. Following from Masai’s successful 2016 tour of the United States, The Art Of Beeing (where he painted over 20 murals of species under threat in 12 cities across nine states in just two months), Missing will highlight a selection of endangered animals from across the planet. Each piece will be a brand-new painting created from large scale murals that Masai has created worldwide, placing each in a region where each animal is native to, from the Amazon rainforest to the streets of Shanghai. The title is also a reference to ‘missing’ posters seen stuck on trees, milk cartons and lampposts throughout the world, a way to engage the viewer with something we as a society normally walk past on a near daily basis.
