The ÈLÈGĒ[S] project was born through the exploration of anticipatory grief/mourning and climate anxiety as a means and method of fostering connection with and stewardship for our more-than-human kin.
Though the initial concepts for this work were born from personal emotional reflection and direct experience, my projects are always deeply embedded in research, analytics and working towards humanizing data in a way that bridges science and art – while considering individual and communal emotion responses to the climate crises and personal connection to place and our interwoven conections to more-than-human kin.
ÈLÈGĒ[S] is transforming into a public art project titled With The Meltwaters, So Too We Go aimed at fostering awareness through multi-generational communal projects that share in collective recollection, making, ritual and grieving for the landscapes that we live in and with, in an effort to re-connect with them to better protect them before they are destroyed.
This work explores themes of anticipated loss, collective mourning, sense of place, embedded histories and imagined futures, kinship, reverence and local ecological stewardship.
Currently this work is taking place in both Iceland and Upstate, NY, with the hope to expand into other regions and communities withing the cryosphere and beyond.
Elegy For A Glacier embodies a multimedia “poem of affection and sorrow,” originating from a distant epoch, dedicated to the Earth and our interconnected companions beyond the human realm, during the era defined as the Anthropocene.
This period marked humanity’s awakening to the unfolding repercussions of its fervent pursuits of industry, colonization, and consumerism upon the sole celestial body within our solar system equipped to sustain and nurture human existence. As humankind grappled with the ramifications of its insatiable desire of progress, the resonance of these compositions reside within the fading echoes of sound, capturing the final expressions of feminine, human tenderness and veneration for the intricate network of more-than-human beings that harmonized life’s equilibrium on this planet.
Following humanity’s demise, these chronicles, safeguarded through the annals of time, are unearthed by novel species and new technologies from an imagined future. Within the cadence of deteriorating sound waves, they unveil the ultimate whispers of humanity’s devotion and homage toward the fragile cohabitants who once nurtured life’s delicate symphony upon this cherished sphere.
Elegy For A Glacier is the catalyst project, inspiring further investigation, connection and collective art making around the central themes of anticipatory mourning and future hindsight as a means of fostering deeper connection to and stewardship of our precious planet.
Humbly I approach your margins
Scanning the topographies of loss
etched into earth
Markers of passing, marks of presence
It is at these edges where things grow
It is at these edges where things die
Our existence hangs in a lucid balance
Slices of atmosphere, stories in flow and flux
You allow me to hold deep time in a fleeting moment
though the consequences of my contact
drip through fingers and moulins
into meltwater rivers
ashes floating out to see and back again
Breaths of advance and retreat
Pulsing, blue spectrum horizons
From crevice to cradle we are linked
Intertwined in fluid connection
echoes in veins and rivers
and molecules ending in the cold continuum
of ancient tongues
I understand now the unsettling symmetry
of how we crumble in on our own movements
though there are still some that don’t believe
though you have been telling us for eons
pouring into footprints, imprints, woven and erased
Our vulnerabilities mapped in edges
that reconfigure continents,
while echoes of imbalances whisper on changing winds,
unravelling the ties that bind
reminding us that no thread exists in isolation.
It is at these edges where life finds its foothold,
It is as your edges where stories unfurl and fade.
And the echoes of our choices mingle with the swell
of
your
retreat.
ELEGES + Elegy For A Glacier was selected for inclusion at FEMeeting 2024 : Women In Art, Science & Technology Conference in Windsor, Ontario Canada for both exhibition and closed session presentation.
A book of abstracts is currently available and can be viewed HERE
Following the presentation of ELEGES at the conference on June 28th – a copy of the presentation materials will be shared here.
Elegy For A Glacier has been included in several exhibitions and screenings including:
FEMeeting 2024: Women In Art, Science & Technology – IOTA Institute – Windsor, ON
Earth’s Reflection – Trolley Barn Gallery – Poughkeepsie, NY
Short Film Showcase – GRIT Gallery – Newburgh, NY
‘Lands and Symbiotic Futures’ – WEAD – Kunstmatrix (Online)
It has also been shared by the Rannsóknasetrið á Hornafirði (Research Center of the University of Iceland in Hornafjörður) and Dr.Þorvarður Árnason
If you are interested in setting up a screening and panel for Elegy For A Glacier, please contact me at [email protected]
This work is currently being shown as a contribution to the UN International Year of Glaciers’ Preservation 2025
