What is an apocalypse?

Is it the fiery end foretold in Revelation, where the sky cracks open, the seas boil, and the earth is swept clean of sin? Perhaps it comes in the form of divine judgment, as many medieval Europeans believed, as a reckoning that arrives in the form of plague or famine and punishes humanity for its excesses? Or is it, as the Romantics thought, when nature rises in chaos, sublime and unstoppable, to reclaim the world from human hands?

Whatever the answer, it is clear that throughout European history, the Apocalypse has evolved, taking myriad forms, to reflect society’s greatest fears, deepest truths, and loftiest aspirations. It is clear that it has been an ever-shifting narrative perpetually shaped not just by the anxieties of its time, but also by the hope (or promise) of transformation—of a world purified, made just, harmonious, and new.

It is for this reason that traditional Eurocentric apocalyptic narratives tend to be somewhat poetic imaginings—that they so often feature dramatic reversals, sweeping destruction, and are rife with moral and spiritual significance. Consider Revelation, for example, when fire and brimstone rid the planet of all life and deliver justice with a terrifying finality:

“And the first angel sounded the trumpet, and there followed hail and fire, mingled with blood, and it was cast on the earth, and the third part of the earth was burnt up, and the third part of the trees was burnt up, and all green grass was burnt up.” (Revelation 8:7).

From divine reckonings and plague-ravaged cities to Romantic visions of nature’s sublime revenge, the “end of the world” has never just been about annihilation; it has always been about revelation, about what is laid bare in the moment of collapse. Here, the Apocalypse is a theatrical display of cosmic order asserting itself, and, while the imagery is visceral and violent, we also know that Revelation does not end in ruin, but in the creation of a “new heaven and a new earth” (Revelation 21:1).

But not all apocalypses come with trumpet blasts, fiery horsemen, and a world made new. Sometimes, they unfold quietly and more insidiously—sometimes, they are the slow erosion of what we once believed to be permanent, until the world we’ve known is irrevocably altered.

Unveiling Meaning

The word “apocalypse” originates from the Greek word “apokálypsis” (ἀποκάλυψις), which translates to “revelation” or “unveiling.” Reaching back to this original meaning, an apocalypse is not necessarily a moment of destruction. It can be a moment of new understanding. In the context of this project, an apocalyptic exploration of the climate crisis may not always signal doom. It can reveal deeper truths about how we live, what we value, who is most vulnerable, and what systems have failed. That apocalyptic “unveiling” becomes a moment of reckoning and potential transformation.

The artworks in this exhibition do not simply document a crisis—they expose its emotional, moral, and political dimensions. They challenge us to confront the scale of the threat while holding space for imagination, resistance, and care.

This Exhibition

Unveiling the Climate Apocalypse, this year’s research exhibition, examines this quieter, ongoing unraveling. While we often associate apocalypse with the past, with myth and prophecy, this project asks what it means to live within one.

Drawing from European artists and perspectives—historically, artistically, and politically—this exhibition explores how narratives of apocalypse continue to shape the way we perceive, fear, and respond to ecological destruction. Europe offers a particularly revealing lens; as both a site of industrial origins and cultural mythmaking, it is deeply implicated in the structure that produces our present moment, while home to artists and thinkers grappling with the legacy of those very systems. Apocalypse can be destructive, or it can be a moment of rebirth and change. It can be a sudden moment of frenzied action, such as the chaotic crowds depicted in Brullov’s “The Last Day of Pompeii.” But it can also be gradual, subtle, like Nixon’s “slow violence… a violence that occurs gradually and out of sight, a violence of delayed destruction that is dispersed across time and space.” Such is the nature of the climate crisis.

Each student in this project has taken up a different artwork that addresses the climate apocalypse in distinct ways—through street art, installation, interactive design, photography, video games, or activism. While the mediums vary, each work asks us to see, feel, and think differently about the world’s fragility and our place in it.

If apocalypse once meant “unveiling,” then perhaps that is where its power still lies. Not in forecasting final destruction, but in revealing what we have failed to see and what we still might save.

This exhibition invites you to consider those questions through the eyes of artists, scholars, and students who together are grappling with one of the most urgent realities of our time.

We invite you to sit with those revelations and to ask, together, what comes next.

End Notes

1. Revelation 6:12-14 (DRB): “And I saw, when he had opened the sixth seal, and behold there was a great earthquake, and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair: and the whole moon became as blood: And the stars from heaven fell upon the earth, as the fig tree casteth its green figs when it is shaken by a great wind: And the heaven departed as a book folded up: and every mountain, and the islands were moved out of their places.”

2. Philip Ziegler, The Black Death (Harper & Row, 1969). This work discusses how medieval Europeans interpreted the bubonic plague as divine punishment for humanity's sins, a belief reinforced by religious sermons and chroniclers of the period. See also: John Aberth, From the Brink of the Apocalypse: Confronting Famine, War, Plague, and Death in the Later Middle Ages (Routledge, 2001).

3. Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, 1757. Burke describes the Romantic fascination with the sublime, particularly the terrifying power of nature. See also: Klaus P. Mortensen, The Apocalypse in English Renaissance Thought and Literature: Patterns, Antecedents, and Repercussions (Manchester University Press, 1985).

4. Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor (Harvard University Press, 2011), 2.