The idea of loss and disappearance as it relates to the natural world and the climate crisis is a paradox: even as science proves the ecological threat is both intimate and universal, that very threat essentially becomes abstract. Ava Federov's art practice embraces the necessary diametric experience of nature and climate cataclysm to offer pathways of understanding, collective mourning, and conceptual adaptation and reevaluation. Through painting, performance, and installation, Federov use lyricism and abstraction to conjure the inverted pain of only realizing the vast importance of something (in this case, life on earth as we have known it) the moment it vanishes.

The fragmentation of this awareness is demonstrated in the physical and implied layering in Federov's paintings. Embedded topographies portray the concept of landscape as both the historical and emotional embodiment of anthropogenic damage. Additionally, with these spaces as a backdrop, Federov creates time-based experiences through video and performance that highlight the ephemerality of our era.

For Laconia Gallery, Federov will exhibit large scal abstract paintings that convey the experience of landscape as being transformed and lost. Together the paintings will envelop the gallery creating the perception of an expanded world that swallows viewers when they step inside the space. Acompanying the paintings will be a new, site specific and interactive piece entitled preMemorial, that embraces the idea of temporality and loss.

About the Artist

Ava Fedorov is a visual artist, writer, and activist who recently moved to Boston from Hawaii. With a background that also includes design and film, she pulls from all realms of her creative knowledge to portray disappearing wilderness, haunted geographies, and the implicit nexus that connects internal and external landscapes. Ava’s work has been exhibited, collected, and published internationally and she has been honored to collaborate with artists and art institutions across the world. Ava teaches studio art at Massachusetts College of Art and Design and is also the founder and president of CICADA, an organization committed to amplifying the creative response to environmental justice and the climate crisis.