Eco-Anxiety and Entangled Grief

 

Worried Earth: Eco-Anxiety and Entangled Grief is an exhibition of work exploring how worry about climate change and ecological collapse is seeping into our lives and dreams, mixing with other fears and anxieties, and entangling with personal experiences of loss. In this ecosystem of grief, art is a place for picturing and shaping bad feelings, including bad feelings about the very act of making art. Each gesture of making is weighed against the desire to do no harm—and the impossibility of a harmless human life within the context of our extractive capitalist system. We grieve our own existence, as well as our eventual demise.

The works in this exhibition sit with and in this grief. They also sing of the ways that grief can open us up. We become capacious, raw, and changeable. We can follow our grief towards wilder and deeper feelings, towards greater empathy for the other beings with whom we share the planet, and towards and into the rhythms of life and death.

 

Curated by Erica Mendritzki

Assistant Curator Melanie Zurba

 

Worried Earth features the work of artists Breanna Barrington, Connie Chappel, Lauren Chipeur, Luke Fair, Laura Findlay, Natalie Goulet, Maureen Gruben, Tsēmā Igharas, Jenine Marsh, Kuh Del Rosario, and Xiaojing Yan.

 

 

 

ABOUT THE CURATORS

Curator Erica Mendritzki is an artist based in Kjipuktuk/Halifax, where she is an Assistant Professor of Painting and Drawing at NSCAD University. She is Co-Principal Investigator on the research project “Worried Earth: Creating vocabularies and rituals for climate grief through multiple knowledge systems and the artistic process” which is supported by the New Frontiers in Research Fund.

Assistant Curator Melanie Zurba is an Associate Professor with the School for Resource and Environmental Studies (SRES) at Dalhousie University, which is located in Kjipuktuk/Halifax. She is the Nominated Principal Investigator on the research project “Worried Earth: Creating vocabularies and rituals for climate grief through multiple knowledge systems and the artistic process” which is supported by the New Frontiers in Research Fund.

 

 

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

 

Breanna Barrington

Breanna Barrington is an artist based on Treaty 6 territory with a BFA from the University of Alberta (visual/performance art).  Blending eco-sensibilities with a dash of whimsy, her work has exhibited at Marshall McLuhan’s childhood home, the Alberta Council for Ukrainian Arts, Mile Zero Dance, hcma Architecture, Alberta Craft Council, Bleeding Heart Art Space, the Works Festival, the Creative Arts Centre, Found Festival, Kaleido Festival, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, an abandoned beehive near Fairview, Harcourt House, Latitude 53 and more. Although Breanna has been carving out a life in Edmonton over the past decade, much of her work is inspired by experiences growing up in and around Grande Prairie.

Artist website: https://www.breannabarrington.com/

 

Connie Chappel

Connie Chappel is a multidisciplinary artist living on Treaty 1 territory in Winnipeg making sculptural work about environments in crisis. Combining natural materials such as roots and wool with manufactured ones, she correlates tree and animal survival with human behaviour. Chappel engages her observations of destruction, neglect, and preservation with material evidence of history having passed. Her work presents tree and body morphism to suggest a warning and an urgency towards saving our fragile ecosystem.

Artist website: https://www.conniechappel.com/

 

Jenine Marsh

Jenine Marsh (b. 1984, Calgary AB Canada) uses sculpture and installation to explore themes of agency, mortality and value. Coins, as well as other paraphernalia of exchange and contact, such as purses and flowers, and fragmented casts of hands or feet, are manipulated and misused. Through serialized processes of destruction and transformation, her works cultivate illicit and intimate responses to the shared conditions of end-stage capitalism. Marsh’s work has been exhibited at Ashley, Berlin (2024); Prairie, Chicago (2024); Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, Vancouver (2024); Cooper Cole, Toronto (2023); Joe Project, Montreal (2023), Gianni Manhattan, Vienna (2023); Union Pacific, London (2023); Night Gallery, Los Angeles (2022); Essex Flowers, New York (2020); Franz Kaka, Toronto (2019); Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2019), OSL Contemporary, Oslo (2019); Entrée Gallery (2018), and Lulu, Mexico City (2015). She has served as artist in residence at the Banff Centre for the Arts (2009, 2010 and 2022), at AiR Bergen at USF Verftet, Bergen (2018); and Rupert, Vilnius (2017). Marsh lives and works in Toronto, Canada.

Artist website: https://jeninemarsh.com/

 

Kuh Del Rosario

Kuh Del Rosario is based in Tiohtià:ke/Montréal, QC. Attuning with everyday materials, herpractice is driven by a desire for grounding within the environment she takes part in. She has been supported by The Peter Thompson Family Graduate Scholarship, CALQ, Canada Council for the Arts, Fonderie Darling sponsored by Romany Eveleigh Gift, and The Claudine & Stephen Bronfman Fellowship. Del Rosario recently exhibited at SKOL 2024, Centre Clark 2023/2024 and Maison de la Culture Monkland 2023. Upcoming group exhibitions at The Art Gallery of Grande Prairie (Aug 2024), Fonderie Darling (September 2024) and a solo show at B-312 (February 2025).

Artist website: https://kuhdelrosario.com/

 

Laura Findlay

Laura Findlay received her BFA from Concordia University in 2011 and MFA from the University of Guelph in 2014. Her practice encompasses painting, drawing, and installation, with recent exhibitions at Norberg Hall, Calgary; Egret Egress, Toronto; Galerie Division, Montreal; Arsenal Contemporary, Toronto, and Forest City Gallery, London. She lives and works in Toronto, Canada.

Artist website: https://laurafindlay.com/

 

Lauren Chipeur

Lauren Chipeur is an artist based in Calgary on Treaty 7 Territory. Her current research investigates the chemistry and complexity of matter as a way to reflect on the parallel and opposing belief systems about our shared material realities. She has exhibited at galleries and artist-run spaces that most recently include Southern Alberta Art Gallery (Lethbridge), Centre Clark (Montréal), and Forest City Gallery (London, ON). Her work has received support from the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, Alberta Foundation for the Arts, Calgary Arts Development and Canada Council for the Arts.

Artist website: https://www.laurenchipeur.com/

 

Luke Fair

Luke Fair grew up in Calgary, AB in treaty 7 territory, where his community prospered from the wealth generated by the oil and gas industry in exchange for the pollution of land, air, and water. Haunted by the looming persistence of environmental degradation and occupation of indigenous lands, his work navigates the complex emotional and economic relationships of resource extraction, manufacturing, and development inherent to global capitalism. He completed his Bachelor’s of Fine Arts at the University of Victoria in 2016 and his Master of Fine Arts at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in 2021. His work has been shown in Canada, Denmark, Finland, and Iceland.

Artist website: https://lukefair.ca/

 

Maureen Gruben

Maureen Gruben’s multi-media practice incorporates diverse organic and industrial materials that are often salvaged from her local environment. She was born and raised in Tuktoyaktuk where her parents were traditional Inuvialuit knowledge keepers and founders of E. Gruben’s Transport. Gruben holds a BFA from the University of Victoria as well as diplomas in Fine Art, Creative Writing, and Indigenous Leadership from the En’owkin Centre, Penticton.

Artist website: https://www.maureengruben.com/

 

Natalie Michelle Goulet

Natalie Michelle Goulet is a Canadian artist working within expanded realms of photography and image making. Of Scottish/French settler ancestry, she was raised in Northern Ontario (Treaty 9 territory) and currently resides in Kjipuktuk/Halifax. She holds an MFA from NSCAD University and a BFA in photography and film studies from the University of Ottawa. Her practice, although rooted in analog photography, consists of diverse material explorations, including the use of found objects and performance. Her work often revolves around concepts of instability and entanglement, and seeks an empathic approach to destructive human tendencies.

Artist website: https://www.nataliemichelle.ca/

 

Tsēmā Igharas

Tsēmā is an award-winning interdisciplinary artist, mentor, mentee and descendant of Tāłtān Matriarchy, living and working on Ohlone Lands in Berkley, California. Using strategies of care and resistance Tsēmā creates work that connects materials to mine sites and bodies to the land. This practice cites her Indigenous mentorships, Potlatch, studies in visual culture, and time in the mountains. She has studied at K’saan, Emily Carr University of Art and Design, and earned an Interdisciplinary Masters of Art Media and Design from OCADu.  Tsēmā has exhibited and performed in Canada, the US, and beyond.

Artist website: https://www.tsema.ca/

 

Xiaojing Yan

Xiaojing Yan is a China born Markham-based artist. Her labour-intensive works infuse with the émigré’s complicated sense of cultural and psychological bifurcation and create contemporary connections to ancestral values. Drawing from Chinese customs and materials invested with symbolic meaning, her unique point of view brings together the past and the present, encompasses culture and nature, art and science. Most recently, her work was futured on the cover of Art in America March 2022 issue, and the cover of Leonardo journal August 2023 issue published by MIT Press. Recent exhibitions include Chinese American Arts Council in NYC, Suzhou Museum in China and Canadian Cultural Centre in Paris. She holds an MFA from Indiana University of Pennsylvania and BFA from Nanjing University of the Arts.

Artist website: https://yanxiaojing.com/artwork/

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Click the thumbnail to view Worried Earth: Eco-Anxiety and Entangled Grief exhibition brochure

 

The Exhibition supported by the New Frontiers in Research Fund.

We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and Alberta Foundation for the Arts.

 

Featured Artwork: Xiaojing Yan, Lingzhi Girl #17, Mycelium, cultivated lingzhi mushrooms and wood chips, 16‘’x18”x18”, 2020