I Used To Be A Polar Bear

I Used To Be A Polar Bear reflects LUAP’s reconnection with nature through travel, friendship and immersion in wild landscapes. It began with a sense of childhood mourning for the natural world and grew into a profound sense of urgency—not just to admire nature, but to protect it. The Pink Bear adopts the identity of "a polar bear," a symbolic climate refugee sharing loss and longing for home.

LUAP illustrates how, without action, animals like the polar bear might transition from real creatures into myths we question ever existed. In Arctic indigenous traditions, the polar bear holds spiritual significance, and its loss would erase not only a species, but also cultural memory.

Through paintings and photographs, a displaced Pink Bear traverses vast, vulnerable environments—haunted by absence yet driven to inspire. In some images, he becomes a guardian of possibility; in others, a solitary figure in liminal landscapes. The series becomes a plea: remember that these beings are real, that their reality matters. I Used To Be A Polar Bear is a meditation on loss and a call to protect what remains.