Andrea Bowers

The neon installation 'Grief Hope' was produced for Bowers' eponymous retrospective at the Museum Abteiberg in Mönchengladbach, Germany, which presented the multi-media oeuvre of the American artist. In this particular work, Bowers makes reference to "environmental grief", which describes the mourning of the loss of nature and its creatures. Coined as early as twenty years ago, the term describes the feeling of bereavement experienced by those who either witness or anticipate the loss of landscapes, plant or animal species, or entire ecosystems as a consequence of human- induced climate change and other intervention. The notion of environmental grief has circulated widely in recent years, steeped in evidence that the Earth’s sixth mass extinction event is already underway, that our global ecosystem is growing weaker and that the entire biosphere is being irreparably destroyed by human activity.