The Glacier Garden in Lucerne, styled as a “Journey to the Centre of Time”, is the setting for another installation by Lelonek. In this case, the artist evokes the abrupt arrival of the Anthropocene using recycled sheets – the very same material that was used to cover the Rhône Glacier, in a style reminiscent of Christo’s wrapped buildings, in an attempt to slow the melting of the ice, but with no real effect other than to pollute the glacier, the ice cave and the river. Lelonek captured the devastating impact of sunlight by coating the sheets in photosensitive paint then exposing them in a camera obscura to the sun as it tracked across the sky. She employed two old, camera-less techniques: solarigraphy (long-duration images of the sun’s path) and cyanotype photography (contact prints), which William Henry Fox Talbot described as “The Pencil of Nature”. The installation’s name, Solarstalgia, is a blend of two words: “solar” and “solastalgia”, the distress we feel when confronted with an overwhelming amount of bad news about climate change.

Diana Lelonek (b. 1988) holds a degree in photography and a PhD in interdisciplinary studies from the University of the Arts in Poznań, Poland. She currently works at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. Her works stand at the crossroads of art and science, exploring processes of overproduction, unlimited growth and environmental harm. She uses photography, living matter and found objects as her mediums.

This project was made possible thanks to the commitment of the Glacier Garden.

Gletschergarten Luzern. Solarstalgia, Diana Lelonek