THE ARTIST GROUP SOLASTALGIA
Åsne Eldøy, Ann Edvartsen Hay, Sidsel Bonde, Christine Hansen, Skade Henriksen & Andrea Grundt Johns
We are a group of artists who have been working with the concept of Solastalgia since 2019. Solastalgia is a combination of the Latin word solacium (comfort) and the Greek ending -algia (pain) developed by the philosopher Glenn Albrecht in 2011. Solastalgia expresses the psychological and existential discomfort many people experience in relation to environmental changes associated with, for example, mining activity, drought and water pollution. A common theme is that communities exposed to such interventions experience powerlessness and a loss of security. Today, many people can feel Solastalgia in a much larger perspective. The poles are melting, waste is being dumped in the fjords and extreme weather causes flooding and destruction.
The group's artistic expression is diverse within techniques such as drawing, painting, sound, video, photography, installation and text. Collaborations and crossovers across disciplines can occur. A self-imposed time limit for the development of artistic work contributes to an intuitive and creative dynamic.
In Norwegian, climate grief has gradually become an established term. However, it is a term that is also controversial. Part of the reason for this is that emotions in relation to climate change tend to be seen as subjective and unhelpful in relation to the challenges we face. "You have to talk about facts - not feelings," it is often said. In our experience of working on the Engebø case, we found that people had very different perceptions of what constituted feelings and facts in this case. It depended, for example, on the perspective from which you saw the case and what interest you had in it. In addition, emotions are about what values people attach to landscapes. If people believe that landscapes have value (national, historical, sentimental, etc.), this will have a major impact on whether they want to preserve them. These factors mean that the emotional aspects of environmental protection cannot be ignored. We also believe that artists can have a special responsibility to visualize and thematize the emotional and value aspects of environmental challenges.