Elisabeth Smolarz: Mélloncene
Elisabeth Smolarz, Seeing a Tiger Didn’t Change Who I Am, 2022.
Curated by Andrew Mroczek
Raizes Gallery, Lesley University
September 7 - October 29, 2023
The exhibition Mélloncene serves as a symbolic reminder of our disconnection from the natural world, and the underlying grief stemming from the ongoing daily loss of hundreds of species who coexist with us on this planet. In her most recent body of work consisting of photographs and videos, Seeing a Tiger Didn't Change Who I Am, Elisabeth Smolarz grapples with the current age of mass extinction. In an effort to address the dire situation faced by the most endangered species, she inserts instructions on how to prevent their extinction into the source codes of public domain images. The resulting photographs and videos appear fragmented, evoking the sense of artifacts unearthed by future archaeologists many centuries from now. The concept of "future memories" depicted in the form of fractured digital artifacts, post-extinction, finds a striking aesthetic parallel with the sculpture of the Lion Man, originally crafted around 40,000 years ago and discovered in 1939. Smolarz acquired a replica of this fragmented sculpture during a recent visit to its excavation site, choosing to include it in the exhibition as a potent symbol of a time when humans were deeply enthralled by nature and profoundly interconnected with it.
