Don't Let’s Go: Preemptive Grief, a World, and Others

This paper is written to accompany my MFA thesis exhibition, the work of holding and exiting, which took place April 10 - May 6, 2023 at shell projects, 13 Mansfield Avenue, Toronto, Canada. The exhibition consisted of lumen prints (a sort of photogram gone wrong), sculptures made from found and discarded materials, and elusive feelings that floated through the space. This paper, “Don’t Let’s Go: Preemptive Grief, A World, and Others” is in a symbiotic relationship with the work of holding and exiting. The paper supplements, is informed by, and informs the work. Grieving the climate crisis can feel diffuse, confusing, and hopeless. The works explored this nebulous grieving through affective means. Artworks that are both abject and beautiful were assembled together in shell projects in a way that asked the viewer to be in intimate relation. The works and the paper search for a more-than-human collectivity. Many of the moments, theorists, and beings that have brought these works into fruition find themselves here in the space of this paper: a reflection, an experimentation, a hand reaching out to the audience; this paper cannot quite go it alone, enmeshed and yet different from the work in the gallery.