‘Fading Senses’ is a research project and a photographic essay where I reflect on sensory deprivation and environmental anxiety. Solastalgia is a relatively new concept for understanding the implications of the loss of ecosystems on our mental and emotional health. Described as an earth-related state, it 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. A perspective of a fading world and a state of fading-away is close to sensory deprivation. Absence of senses, one of the biggest human fears, can lead to intra-mental perception, echolocation and memory flashbacks. As I have temporarily lost one of the senses in the past, this deprivation became my intuitive leading guide, which I have applied to the working method and to the visual language. Being strongly concerned about solastalgia’s impact, I asked myself, what happens if we lose our senses? How does it affect our emotional health and memory, in the times of multispecies extinction? Using photography, I create a mental image of an ungraspable sensation to underline human disconnection from the natural habitat.

Self-published book (first edition) containing thinking process and research behind ‘Fading Senses’. Ed. 1/1

After experiencing losing a sense of smell for six months, I recreated this sensation in an olfactory installation. Amygdala and the hippocampus in a brain are responsible for storing smell memory and emotions, therefore smell memory is a deepest and most saturated that we have. Smelloss in a shape of an industrial dust, resonate with a scent of forest. My experience of losing smell, although abstract, in 2020 became a common dread and an indicator of COVID-19.

Interview conducted by me with a Belgian photographer Geert Goiris on his PhD project World Without Us (Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp 2019), for my master thesis: Visual Storytelling Beyond Anthropocene: Geert Goiris and ‘World Without Us’ (Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp 2020).︎Find out more about the artist’s project ︎︎︎here.