“Wynn Bruce / Wooden man”

Wynn Bruce is a photojournalist and climate activist living in Colorado. He grew up around nature, taking trips to Lake Superior with his dad. He enjoys hiking; he doesn’t own a car and bikes everywhere he goes. 

The defining moment of his life was a car crash at 18 in which his friend died and he suffered a traumatic brain injury and damaged one of his legs. Now, he’s a Buddhist who meditates to deal with his mental disability.

He’s described as a kind soul, caring, having an affinity for helping people. There’s stories of him stopping on the side of the road to pray for roadkill. He volunteers for hospice.

In 2022, on Earth Day, he flew from his home in Boulder to Washington DC, walked up the Supreme Court steps, sat down, and lit himself on fire. 

He did so as an act of protest against a Supreme Court decision that was being voted on that day. In emails to friends it was apparent that he was mentally unwell because of his injuries. 

The sculpture is of a person after their immolation, after the roaring flame has left and the air is now silent and still. The piece recreates the quiet moment after the chaos. A moment where all that’s left is to reflect on that person's life.

A boy who loved nature and suffered mental damage from a traumatic car crash. A man who found Buddhism to cope, and yet felt hopeless in the face of his cognitive disability. Someone with extreme empathy who became a photojournalist to capture earth's beauty and the climate crisis affecting it.

Mental disability, interest in protest, and obsessive empathy. When learning about Wynn, it seemed as if every aspect of his life was somehow poising him to do what he did. Reading emails he sent, it’s apparent he felt the same.

I imagined him here, made of sticks, to suggest that he viewed himself as a wooden man waiting to be lit on fire. That the world had morphed him into something destined to self-immolate. By showing this quiet moment after the act, I hope to convey the struggle of going against your own nature and instinct. (Fighting against Freud's Thanatos)

His story is part cautionary tale about “world-saving” obsession and partly a question of how to navigate permanent health issues.

I posed the sculpture in the “Earth witness” mudra, which was assumed by Siddhartha as he called upon earth to witness his enlightenment and triumph over temptation. Looking back now on this piece, I think the pose is kind of counterproductive. To me the piece is about the struggle to navigate disability rather than his message about climate change.