Worried Earth Eco-Anxiety and Entangled Grief

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Xiaojing Yan, “Lingzhi Girl #17,” 2020

mycelium cultivated lingzhi mushrooms and wood chips, 16x18x18" (courtesy of the Gallery)

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.

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.