From a soul is not made of atoms; text by curator Dr. Adrienne Fast

” The qualities of beauty, anxiety, and vulnerability are shared by the final works in the exhibition: a series of wall-mounted, text–based works titled a salve for grief (2020). In these works, the artist forges a connection between the collective experience of ecological grief, and the personal experience of individual grief that each of us encounters in our lives. The texts are taken from a journal written by Van den Eijnden as a way of working through the illness and death of a beloved pet, and they are rendered in a micro-prism acrylic that appears to change colour as visitors move around the works. The ambiguous language in Van den Eijnden’s phrases, coupled with the dynamic spatial and chromatic qualities of these works remind us that grief is never static, rather it is always something lived with and through over time. Texts such as “this death is a depth,” “infinity ends with us,” and “our sad fragments live on” are poignant and moving, and are intended as a reminder of the beauty that persists and can be found even in loss, despair, or the navigation of a new reality.