An Online comic that gives form to nature as a human figure, inviting reflection on the systems we live in and the environment that sustains them.
Episode 3
In Episode 3, the Magna Mater encounters a strange architecture of human invention: the economy. Here, she finds a world where some labors are weighed and measured in coin, while the labors of the earth—her labors—go unnoticed, uncounted, and unrewarded. The rivers clean themselves, the bees pollinate, the soil renews, and no ledger records the value. She pauses, troubled, asking not only why the breath of the forest is deemed worthless, but also what such blindness costs the soul of a people who no longer recognize the generosity of the world they stand upon.
The role of storytelling
Scientific research shows that storytelling is a powerful way to engage with complexity. It activates more cognitive and emotional regions of the brain than facts alone, fostering empathy, memory retention, and reflection. This project explores how visual storytelling can support ecological literacy and systems thinking by translating abstract challenges into emotionally resonant, visually accessible narratives.
What’s next?
In the fourth episode, Magna Mater enters a bank, not to transact, but to seek an understanding. She is drawn to the machinery of economic value, intrigued by how certain labor is measured, quantified, and, ultimately, commodified, while her own—rooted in the soil, in the cycles of growth and decay—goes unnoticed, unaccounted for, and unrewarded. She asks: why is some work, even when it touches lives, exchanged for currency, while the vast labor of the earth, the labor of sustaining life itself, is left to linger in the margins? The economist, with his charts and jargon, might offer answers—but will they satisfy her? Tune in to find out.
