Performing Solastalgia: Queer Forms of Ecological Care in Contemporary Performance and Relational Art Practice

This article examines two projects by contemporary artists whose work engages performatively, queerly, and diasporically with the landscape and environment in the context of anthropogenic climate change and the disappearing ecosystems it engenders. Focusing on Roni Horn's long-term relational installation Vatnasafn/The Library of Water (2007–ongoing) and Patty Chang's video installation Invocation for a Wandering Lake Part 1 & 2 (2015–2016), I analyze these works through the framework of "performing solastalgia." Horn's installation mobilizes relational practice by assembling a space for social encounter around the watery remains of receding glaciers, while Chang's video work stages the diasporic body in acts of melancholic care that extend beyond the human to animals and inanimate matter. I argue that both projects enact critical performances of solastalgia—a neologism coined by Glenn Albrecht—which they deploy expansively to articulate a longing for vanishing homes and ecosystems while simultaneously catalyzing solace through queer forms of collective care.