What is wrought when one is cleaved apart from nature? Modern culture’s insistence that we are outside of nature has led to an estrangement from our wildness. The consequence of seeing ourselves as separate from nature, and therefore of each other, has wrought havoc on the body of the earth and on the bodies of her people. Disenfranchised grief, or Solastalgia, a palpable form of psychic or existential distress caused by environmental change, reflects our increasing sense of loss.

This Lamentation is felt in rising extinctions and raging storms, and in the witness of the blood-soaked earth. Artists respond to this rupture through an intimate exchange with the rhizomatic world. The objects in this exhibition mourn, lament, rage, rejoice, hope, and react to our changing ecosystem. A sense of sorrow, and momento mori, pairs with hopeful activism and a sense of solophilia, or love and responsibility for the material world. These artists reflect on the inextricable network of life, and share an anguish alongside material outcries for change.

“Solastalgia,” a combination of the Latin word solacium (comfort) and the Greek root –algia (pain), defined as “the pain experienced when there is recognition that the place where one resides and that one loves is under immediate assault . . . a form of homesickness one gets when one is still at ‘home.’” – Glenn Albrecht

Curated by Patricia Miranda