The Mayor's Office Gallery

ELEGY TO THE UNDERGROUND

By Sarah Salvick

As the climate crisis deepens, Sarah Slavick grieves for our natural world. As humans we have not only caused massive ecological destruction, but we have separated ourselves from nature and lost our connection with it. Dacher Keltner says that we are “awe deprived.” We often fail to understand, value, or even notice the wondrous, vast, slow, interconnected, primordial natural world alongside us. Awe of majestic trees, vast vistas, and expansive seas as well as the microbial world, fosters a small sense of self. That consciousness of the self as part of the gigantic web of space and life is a reset to the mind that brings us to see, feel, and act on the connections beyond the self. Awe both elevates and grounds us. 

Through her work, Slavick hopes to bring the audience to a state of awe and wonderment while also strengthening and bringing into consciousness our connections to nature. While the trees above ground are critical for human survival in producing oxygen, Sarah Slavick, in her Elegy to the Underground series, is particularly drawn to what happens below ground in the mycorrhizal networks that trees form through their roots. By sharing resources and working together in complex and intricate pathways, alliances, and kinship networks, trees reach enormousness and increase their chances of survival and ours as well. These discoveries about the hidden life of trees offer new metaphors for how we might protect our home and our species. They also echo ancestral indigenous knowledge that had long recognized these patterns of interdependence in nature — a reminder that this understanding is not new, only newly acknowledged. 

Sarah Slavick is a Fine Arts faculty member at Lesley University in Cambridge, MA. A recipient of the Massachusetts Cultural Council grant in Painting, among others, she has been awarded artist residencies that include the Baer Art Center in Iceland, the Millay Colony, and the Bemis Center for Contemporary Art. Her work was included in "Yušká: Uncoil" at the Mills Gallery/ Boston Center for the Arts. "Family Tree", an exhibition of her and her three artist sisters’ work premiered at the Aratoi Wairarapa Museum of Art and History in New Zealand, traveled to the Erie Art Museum and other venues. In April, it will open at Wilkes University in Wilkes Barre, PA. Past exhibition highlights include Big Bang! Abstract Painting for the 21st Century at the DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park and Dix Artistes Americaines in Strasbourg, France. Her work has been featured in: Interalia magazine, an online publication dedicated to the interactions between the arts, the sciences, and consciousness; the Boston Globe; Hyperallergic; the contemporary criticism journal; Diacritics, the online journal of literature and art; Posit 9, and more.

This exhibition is organized by Galleries and Exhibitions Manager, Mariana Rey in dialogue with the artist. To learn more about the artist please visit sarahslavick.com.