“Look Again. Think Again.” — Tate Modern’s original tagline — takes on a new urgency in Haze Modern, which references the institution’s iconic visual identity in the context of Southeast Asia’s recurring environmental crisis. Every year, a familiar haze settles over the region. Skies turn grey, visibility disappears, and millions breathe air polluted by fires burning hundreds of kilometres away. What has come to be accepted as a seasonal inconvenience is, in reality, a largely man-made crisis.
Behind the smoke lies a far more troubling picture: deforestation, land grabbing, the draining and burning of carbon-rich peatlands, and the relentless expansion of industrial agriculture, particularly the palm oil industry. Forests are reduced to commodities, wildlife loses its habitat, and entire communities bear the consequences of environmental destruction driven by profit.
Borrowing the visual language of one of the world’s most recognisable cultural institutions, Haze Modern transforms a symbol of contemporary art into a commentary on a contemporary crisis. Rendered through a dissolving field of black dots, the familiar typography becomes unstable, fragmented and difficult to read — a visual metaphor for blurred accountability, obscured truths and the uncomfortable reality of a crisis we have learned to live with.
Originally painted for Haze: Coming Soon, a 2023 exhibition curated by Ernest Zacharevic in collaboration with Greenpeace, the work builds on the conversation initiated by Splash and Burn, an ongoing art-led environmental awareness project confronting deforestation, destructive palm oil practices and the displacement of wildlife and communities in Indonesia.
Art cannot extinguish fires. But it can challenge indifference, question the systems behind them, and keep difficult conversations visible.
Released through CULTPRINT as a limited-edition silkscreen print, Haze Modern revisits a work whose message remains as urgent as ever.
20% of proceeds will support NGOs working to combat deforestation and rescue wildlife in Indonesia.