« Stuck Like a Polar Bear » is a 3D artwork that focuses on ecological urgency and the effects of climate change, through the image of a white snail caught in a world where rising waters have become an inevitable threat. Perched atop its own shell, the snail searches for a temporary refuge, yet its slowness—symbolic of inaction and procrastination in the face of an imminent crisis—highlights the dilemma of both the individual and society when confronted with environmental emergencies.

The snail, through its inexorable slowness, embodies the failure to react in time, the delay in decision-making, and the weakness of our response in a world that is rapidly deteriorating. In parallel, the polar bear, caught in the melting of its ice, represents another victim of climate change, a being whose habitat is vanishing beneath its feet. Together, the snail and the polar bear symbolize the fragility of living beings facing a world that is changing too fast for them to adapt.

The snail, by its very nature, is a symbol of slowness. Its pace here is used to illustrate collective procrastination and humanity’s inability to respond swiftly to environmental challenges. Each movement of the snail becomes a metaphor for our reluctance to act in the face of rising waters and planetary degradation. While the snail struggles not to be engulfed, its slowness symbolizes inertia, a response that is too weak and too late in the face of the urgency of climate change.

Though the shell offers both refuge and protection, it also becomes a burden. Slow, fragile, and confined within its own structure, the snail is incapable of escaping danger in time. This reflects the human condition, trapped within economic, political, and social systems too slow to respond effectively to crisis. The time lost by not acting is mirrored in the snail’s pace, and this slowness becomes a kind of prison, locking the individual inside defensive mechanisms and a refusal to face the urgent situation.

The key element of the piece is the rising water, a metaphorical representation of climate disruption. The water engulfing the snail symbolizes the inevitability of environmental catastrophe. The snail, too slow to react, finds itself struggling for survival in a world where adaptation seems to come too late. Its delayed response, contrasted with the speed of environmental events, highlights the growing gap between the urgency of the situation and society’s belated reaction to ecological crisis.

The viewer is invited to project themselves into the snail’s slowness, to question their own responsiveness to ecological crisis. Are we, like the snail, unable to leave our shells and respond to environmental urgency? This slowness, which might seem harmless in other contexts, becomes here a real threat, underlining that inaction in the face of climate urgency leads only to the engulfment of our world. The artwork invites introspection, how responsible are we for the immobility in the face of the changes surrounding us?

The use of 3D enhances the immersive aspect of the piece, plunging the viewer into a world where the threat of rising water is omnipresent. This visual immersion, combined with the snail’s slowness, creates a striking contrast with the acceleration of environmental events in the real world. The viewer, observing the snail’s agony, is invited to feel this nearly paralyzing slowness, and to reflect on their own delay in responding to ecological crises. This tension between the snail’s slow movement and the rapidity of climate change becomes a metaphor for our inability to react to looming catastrophe.

The snail’s slowness symbolizes our failure to confront our shadow, to break free from the denial mechanisms that prevent action in the face of ecological breakdown. In the same way, slowness as procrastination echoes Lacan’s “mirror stage,” where the individual is confronted with a world changing at a pace they cannot match. From a scientific perspective, the piece reflects research on the slowness of institutional responses to imminent environmental threats, and on the impact this delay has on biodiversity and fragile ecosystems.