Fading Senses

What happens when we lose our senses? Reflecting on sensory loss, ecological grief and solastalgia, I create a mental image of an ungraspable sensation to express growing disconnection from nature and the ecological grief for disappearing habitats.

Ecological grief or solastalgia is a relatively new concept for understanding the implications of the loss of ecosystems on our mental and emotional health. The term introduced in 2003 by environmental philosopher Glenn Albrecht, describes a sense of a climate grief, a feeling of ‘losing home while being in it’. This earth-related state reflects the zeitgeist of our time. As an increasing problem in societies, it manifests itself in a feeling of dislocation, a lived experience of the loss of the present.

The perception of a fading world, of things gradually disappearing, resonates with the experience of sensory deprivation. The loss of a sense, one of our greatest human fears, can heighten internal perception, evoke memories and lead us to rely on other senses, such as echolocation. Having temporarily lost a sense of smell in the past, I became deeply aware of this vulnerability. This experience became an intuitive guide for my working method and visual language. During the process, I was drawn to places associated with stability and protection. By focusing on these environments, I searched for visual signs of disconnection that might reflect an underlying sense of insecurity.

My research into solastalgia began with my own experience of ecological grief. In 2017, a tornado-like storm swept through a centuries-old forest in Bory Tucholskie, Poland. In just fifteen minutes, forty hectares of woodland were transformed into an apocalyptic landscape. The scale of the disaster struck me deeply, and I felt a profound sense of grief for the many species that had lost their habitats. Around the same time, I temporarily lost my sense of smell. I became fascinated by the idea of ‘disappearing senses’ and by how incredibly fragile yet powerful they are.

I began to question and investigate my own experience: what happens when we lose our senses? How does sensory loss affect our emotional well-being and memory in a time of multispecies extinction? I also recognised a profound connection between our senses and environmental destruction. Following the disaster in Bory Tucholskie, the forest had lost its familiar sensory presence: there was no birdsong, no smell of moss or mushrooms, no longer the same forest to see. Its disappearance was not only a visual transformation of the landscape, but also a loss of the sensory relationships through which we experience and recognise the world.