Material Lamentations: Art, Grief and the Land
January 8 - February 2, 2019
Reception January 11, 5-7pm
Cambridge Art Association
I was honored to curate this exhibition on a subject I care deeply about, and with artists whose work I love.
Artists: Christine Aaron, Beth Dary, Katherine Jackson, Michelle Lougee, Heidi Neilson, Melissa Potter and Maggie Puckett, Julie Poitras Santos, Deanna Witman

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.

Cambridge Art Association
25 Lowell St, Cambridge, MA 02138
image: Julie Poitras Santos, still detail of video, Paper Ark

patricia miranda

patricia miranda