Date of Award
Summer 8-27-2021
Degree Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Fine Arts (MFA)
Department
Art
Advisor(s)
Van Aken, Sam
Keywords
Appalachia, climate change, eco-anxiety, ecological grief, extinction, Kentucky
Subject Categories
Arts and Humanities | Fine Arts
Abstract
This thesis considers the potential of grief and mourning to foster meaningful engagement with global ecological crises. I explore this potential through my own studio practice, positioning artworks and creative processes as vehicles for articulating collective experiences of loss, anxiety, and bereavement. To create these artworks, I draw from scientific knowledge, regional folkways, geologic history, and intergenerational experience with an emphasis on local culture. By forming sustained confrontations with the negative emotions of ecological destruction and loss, I advocate for the acceptance of grief as a reality of our time and as a possible means of imagining different ways of being in a permanently transformed world.
Access
Open Access
Recommended Citation
Brumfield, Katlyn, "Mourning Earth; Ritual Expressions of Ecological Grief" (2021). Theses - ALL. 555.
https://surface.syr.edu/thesis/555
