EARTH REQUIEM, a site-specific art installation with live choirs and chamber orchestra conceived by Diana Wege, is a warning response to humanity as the effects of climate change, pollution, resource depletion, and nuclear capability create apocalyptic conditions for the future of our planet.

The piece envisions a dystopian cathedral where the degradation and death of nature is symbolized by a series of vandalized landscape paintings (each a copy of the iconic Niagara Falls from the American Side by Frederic Edwin Church, 1867) installed in urban public spaces.

To convey the ongoing abuse of our environment and the carelessness with which we treat it, the artist added to the work’s magnificent cliffs realistically rendered graffiti. The latter depict the nomenclature of legislative bills that had already been passed by Congress to undermine the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts. Wege then places the pieces outdoors where, vulnerable and unprotected—like the real American landscape—they are subjected to more defacement on the streets.