Abbey Hepner, Snow Globe for Extractive Industry, Solastalgic Archive
The UNH Museum of Art announces it's new exhibition, The Solastalgic Archive, which will run September 16 through December 3, 2022, at the Paul Creative Arts Center. A reception will take place Thursday, September 15, 2022, from 4:00-6:00 p.m. The exhibition is open to the public and free of charge.
The Solastalgic Archive, by artist Nina Elder, functions as a repository for artifacts generated through community participation in the Deep Time Lab. The Solastalgic Archive presents materials imbued with personal meaning contributed by visitors that contextualize and give breadth to the experience of living and making in this time of accelerated environmental transformation. The Archive contains ephemera from a wide range of contributors; objects include arrowheads, charcoal from the Paradise, California wildfires, obsolete recording media and videos of places irrevocable changed. The Solastalgic Archive is an evolving, changing, temporal thing.
Deep Time Lab is a participatory experiment in how we situate ourselves within time. The Lab merges the forms of exhibition, pedagogy and archive, orienting participants to Earth’s new geologic epoch, the Anthropocene. Defined by human impact, urgency and unprecedented change, this era reveals that there is not a single, predictable future. History is a story that can be retold and revised. What will be is being scripted right now.
“The Archive is a collective time capsule of a moment in Earth’s history,“ says Kristina Durocher, director of the Museum of Art. “The exhibition invites reflection on what was and what will be lost forever as the planet changes.”
Deep Time Lab provides resources and programs to promote new connections between past, present and potential futures, by exploring time as a language, a measure, an art medium, a social context, a scientific principle, a spiritual space and a cultural expression. Over the course of the semester, the Museum invites students, community members and visiting collaborators to foster interdisciplinary experimentation through Deep Time Lab programs complimenting the exhibition The Solastalgic Archive.
Join the Museum for a virtual artist talk with artist Nina Elder on November 10, 2022, from 7:00 – 8:00 p.m. (register here).
Individuals, groups and classes are invited to participate in a Deep Time Lab exploratory session and contribute objects to the Solastalgic Archive. Contact Molly Bolick, education and outreach manager, for more information, by email or at 603-672-3713.
Solastalgic Archive is a curatorial project of artist Nina Elder, and is organized by Dr. Natalie R. Marsh of artepodia. Elder creates projects that reveal humanity’s dependence on, and interruption of, the natural world. With a focus on changing cultures and ecologies, Elder advocates for collaboration, fostering relationships between institutions, artists, scientists and diverse communities. She is the co-founder of the Wheelhouse Institute, a women’s climate leadership initiative. Elder lectures as a visiting artist/scholar at universities, develops publicly engaged programs and consults with organizations that seek to grow through interdisciplinary programming. Visit www.ninaelder.com for more information.
The exhibition is supported by the S. Melvin and Mary Jo Rines Art Exhibition Fund.
During the academic year, the Museum of Art is open Monday through Wednesday and Friday from 10 a.m.- 4 p.m., Thursday from 10 a.m.- 6 p.m. and Saturday from 12 p.m.- 4 p.m. The Museum will be closed November 23-27, 2022.
