​Sabrina Elise Barnett

Project Statement

Melt: A Lost Song explores the vague, but persistent dread conjured from continuing reports of irreversible climate change. Views of ice and glaciers dripping their own disappearance from their polar homes creates images as unsettling as they are alluring; tropical orchids bloom from layers of softened snow, blue pools form where freeze once reigned. Seeking expiation for generations of crime, mankind's prevailing narrative concerning global weather transformations has been one of inevitability and helplessness; we mythologize the world's decline and choose to view worsening natural disasters as beyond human intervention or understanding, near supernatural in nature. The fairy tale of humanity's impotence and the inscrutability of the natural world thus absolves us of responsibility, and renders us incapable of action. The collection also seeks to explore environmental destruction's intersection with the disenfranchising of women; Western culture's disgust with “womanly” qualities such as sensitivity to nuance, instinct toward nurturing and connection with/fondness for the Earth are the very qualities which may have prevented, and may still slow, the dismantling of our Earth.