Solastalgic Archive
Nina Elder
January 15 – March 8, 2026
GOCA Project Space
Ent Center for the Arts
Solastalgic Archive
“Solastalgia” is the premonition of transition; a sense of loss from an anticipated future. It is the feeling of homesickness before leaving home.
Conceived by artist Nina Elder, the Solastalgic Archive holds materials that contextualize and give breadth to the experience of living and making in this time of accelerated change. The evolving archive of objects, images, and conceptual actions collects ephemera of memory, creation, forgetting, destruction, preciousness and transience offered by contributors. It is an evolving, changing, temporal entity that will continue to grow as it is enriched by additions connected to each host venue.
Beginning in 2019 with more than 40 artists, and continuing to grow throughout it’s many showings, Elder invites fellow climate conscious artists, scholars and public intellectuals, as well as farmers, spiritual practitioners, indigenous leaders, and activists to contribute something that represents the “solastalgic”. Much like the practicalities of a traditional time capsule, each submission has had only one physical requirement: it must fit in a medium flat rate USPS postal box; boxes in which the exhibition’s objects continue to be carefully stored and moved from venue to venue.
The Solastalgic Archive holds contributions from a vast array of people, each asked to consider what connects them to the passage time. Unlike other museum collections, the Solastalgic Archive holds deeply personal items as well as things that change or disappear over time. Harnessing solastalgia as the archives’ organizing principle, the collections exemplify transformation rather than permanence, fleeting relationships rather than immutable. By allowing emotions and ephemerality to displace institutional indifference and contrived eternities, this space enlivens the passage of time. Installed in GOCA’s Project Space, the Solastalgic Archive will evolve over the course of the exhibition and will continue to grow through classroom activities and public workshops.
Nina Elder is also presenting a new solo exhibition, The Source Never Diminishes, in GOCA’s main gallery. Stop by to see both exhibitions at the Ent Center for the Arts!
Nina Elder’s AWOL Sculpture!
The Source Never Diminishes, Erosion control fabric sourced from the Utah Department of Transportation, PVC, wire, satin, 2025
Alongside her two exhibitions, Elder created a monumental public artwork spanning ~120 feet through the Ent Center for the Arts! This piece is the newest edition to GOCA’s AWOL Program and will be on-display through September 2026.
IMPORTANT DATES
Exhibition On-View:
January 15 – March 8, 2026
VACS Lecture with Nina Elder:
Thursday, February 12th, 2026, 6-7 pm
Chapman Recital Hall
*registration required, tickets available below
Gallery hours:
Thursday - Saturday, 1 - 6 p.m., or by appointment
email: gallery@uccs.edu | call: 719-255-3504
About Nina Elder
Artist and researcher Nina Elder creates projects that reveal humanity’s dependence on, and interruption of, the natural world. With a focus on changing cultures and ecologies, Nina advocates for collaboration, fostering relationships between institutions, artists, scientists and diverse communities. Because Nina is devoted to rural communities and often overlooked places, she regularly works outside of urban cultural centers and the commercial art world. Nina lectures as a visiting artist/scholar at universities, develops publicly engaged programs, and consults with organizations that seek to grow through interdisciplinary programming.
Nina’s artwork is widely exhibited and has been featured in Art in America, VICE Magazine, and on PBS. Her research has been supported by the Andy Warhol Foundation, the Rauschenberg Foundation award for Arts & Activism, the Pollock Krasner Foundation, and the Mellon Foundation. She has recently held positions as an Art + Environment Research Fellow at the Nevada Museum of Art, a Polar Lab Research Fellow at the Anchorage Museum, and a Researcher in Residence in the Art and Ecology Program at the University of New Mexico. She migrates between rural Colorado and site-specific projects.
Photos and Videos by Wes Magyar, Stellar Propeller Studio, and Joshua Dorado, for the Galleries of Contemporary Art at UCCS, 2025