We Are Worth Saving

Arts + Literature Laboratory presents We Are Worth Saving, a show by Ciel Skål, open from January 22 through March 27, 2027 alongside concurrent solo exhibitions A fragile unfolding by Meg Mitchell, and The Forest Belongs To Everyone, But It Is Not Yours by Ren LaDassor. There will be an opening reception on Friday, January 22.

In the living moment, Ciel Skål captures violence's slow, uneven descent into our politics and earth, oscillating between the gentleness of the mundane and a rising tide of fear. We Are Worth Saving asks us to consider not only our responsibility to the future, but our obligations to the past. This work honors the ordinary person and the defiance of everyday people that shape our histories and prehistories.

Red tethers Skål’s black-and-white ink works. Red historically represents Love and Politics: the heart as an enduring symbol of human connection and the color’s charged histories of propaganda, revolution, and resistance to oppression. Red ochre, one of humanity’s earliest pigments, connects these works to prehistoric art and our oldest surviving forms of visual expression. Collected water serves as a defining constant in each piece, suspending ink and embedding the works on paper in the place's material memory. These waters are drawn from the Great Lakes region, Madison, and sites connected to recent protests across the United States. They include the Willamette and Columbia Rivers in Oregon, where Skål was born, and childhood memories now collide with protests against ICE, as well as melted snow gathered in Minneapolis, where she joined demonstrations in solidarity with close friends. As the stakes rise, Skål turns our attention to everyday citizens—in Minneapolis, Portland, New York, and beyond—and the resilience of those who came before us. From those who challenged the divine right of kings to those resisting contemporary systems of power, histories of defiance remind us that resistance is not reserved for the powerful. We Are Worth Saving asks what it means to inherit these histories, remain accountable to one another, and recognize what is still worth saving.

As a self-described "child of nowhere," Ciel Skål grew up with an identity shaped by caveats. Her childhood was marked by cultural division and instability, forcing her to ask what it means to be home. In adulthood, she found stability through degrees in behavioral research and art history, which led to a compelling career in archaeological illustration, but after losing several family members, she shifted to full-time visual arts and writing as a form of catharsis. Her work explores themes of loss, generational grief, and identity through place, drawing on her lived experiences and research.

Image: No Respite, 2026