High Latitude Dust Workshop 2025

Emilia Telese is a multimedia artist based in Iceland. She uses earth and loam from emotionally and environmentally significant and meaningful places to make work pushing boundaries of printmaking and performance. Her works including Icelandic dust will be part of the Workshop.

Breathing Space (2025) is a conceptual printmaking series by artist and scholar Emilia Telese exploring the interplay between materiality, temporality, and environmental degradation. Using volcanic and atmospheric dust collected by scientist Pavla Dagsson-Waldhauserova from Icelandic dust storms, Telese makes ink for her mezzotint etchings on copper plates following recipes from the XVI Century. The work engages with ecological themes, highlighting the impermanence of the environment and its regenerative cycles. Drawing on theories of hyperobjects (Morton) and vibrant matter (Bennett), the series examines the agency of seemingly insignificant materials. The modular nature of the prints reflects fragmentation and change, while the slow, deliberate process of etching echoes the passage of time. Ultimately, Breathing Space invites reflection on environmental decay, renewal, and human interaction with natural forces.