Rituals of Loss: Finding Kinship with the Land and the Other Than Human

Caitlin ffrench’s research/praxis thesis maps the parallels between the anthropogenic world and the ongoing impacts of multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, and endometriosis on her body. Her ritual practice explores natural materials and processes, including natural plant dyes and ochre pigments, along with textiles, ceramics and documentary photography of important sites affected by climate change. Conceptually centered around the term solastalgia— grief felt for the dying world— ffrench invites her audience to reflect on their own experience of grief and its relationship to the devastation of climate change. Employing methodologies of phenomenology, observation and walking the land, along with technologies of magic, dreamwork, intuition, bibliomancy (the use of books in divination) and geomancy (earth divination) to lead her investigative processes, she creates installations on the land and in the gallery that provoke and encourage a heightened awareness of the destruction of the natural world.