In this work, Charrière makes an homage to one of the contemporary landscapes of our resource extraction: the rainforests burned in order to make way for oil palm plantations and the biofuels, cosmetics and food additives it renders. The series Ash Cloud Forest | To Observe Is to Influence (2023) explores the tension between our colonial imaginary of jungles and the physical places they evoke. It reveals an unexpected immateriality shared between the two, with ancient rainforests going up in smoke on a daily basis. This transience haunts the work, with the title making an analogy between the passing cloud forest and the funerary ashes left behind by slash-and-burn practices. Dealing with both ideas of nature and the nature of loss, Charrière portraits this devastating turn whereby vast old-growth ecosystem can be literally swept away by wind.
The threat of fire is felt in the material of the artwork itself. To produce it a wood plank is engraved with imagery of flora and fauna, which is then burnt. Utilized as a print block for a woodcut, these illustrations are then printed on black handmade paper. The visions of tropical landscapes found in the piece are drawings borrowed from among others Alfred Russel Wallace. A 19th century explorer, biologist, and anthropologist, Wallace developed these subtle motifs during his field work in the Malay Archipelago. It was also during these travels that he identified a faunal boundary zone between biogeographical realms in Asia and Australia, now known as the Wallace line. Through his research he would become one of the first scientists to issue warnings over the link between deforestation and climate change.