Some 37,000 tonnes of crude oil were spilled into the sea when the Exxon Valdez supertanker struck the Prince William Sound’s Bligh Reef on March 24, 1989, endangering seals, sea otters, salmon and sea birds like the penguin. It was an environmental disaster with lasting effects even after a decade, with actual ecological recovery taking another two decades. Hamir Soib uses the Humboldt penguin, shown desperately gasping for life, as the victim symbol of threatened marine life in the area. This work was shown at the ‘Art For Nature’ fund-raiser for the Worldwide Fund for Nature, with the theme ‘Shifting Boundaries’. (Note: Another disastrous oil spill happened in 2010 in the Deepwater Horizon). Hamir Soib was a founding member of the Matahati group who was  initially involved in stage and filming before going full-throttle into art when he set up The Gudang warehouse art-space in 2002. His earlier pursuits saw him clinch the Best Art Director award with Zuraini Anuar for Perempuan Melayu Terakhir in the 14th Malaysia Film Festival. He held his first solo in 2005 and won the Shah Alam Art Gallery’s Incentive Prize. In 2007, he was a finalist in the Sovereign Art Award in Hong Kong. When still in school (Mara Institute of Technlogy) in 1990, he won a Consolation Prize in the Dokumentasi Kemiskinan competition.