Biography
Hollis Cato is an interdisciplinary artist and philosopher based on the Front Range of Colorado. She holds an M.A. in Ecopsychology from Naropa University, where she developed “Shadow Composting,” a Jungian-informed ecological method of engaging the unconscious through material processes. She is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness at CIIS, researching “Trashkin”—how communing with discarded matter reveals both psychic shadow and the cosmological histories embedded in waste. Hollis works primarily with second-hand and salvaged materials through acrylic and bleach painting, sewing, printmaking, and sculpture.
Paper Abstract
Amid the compounding polycrises of the Anthropocene, the mass accumulation of “garbage” emerges as one of the most revealing—and troubling—developments of our time. Its urgency is reflected in the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals and in philosophical reflections such as Michael Marder’s claim that our very being is becoming inseparable from the toxic dumps we produce. This crisis of waste arises from a deeply entrenched “waste mentality,” an inheritance of linear time and colonial logics of “away”—the same temporal fiction that has been used to cast off not only our objects, but entire communities and the aspects of ourselves deemed incongruent with dominant narratives.
Drawing on Donna Haraway’s notion of “odd kin,” I propose that one of the most transformative ways to “stay with the trouble” is to cultivate kinship with our own garbage. Through creative speculation and philosophical inquiry, engaging both our literal and metaphorical refuse becomes a spiritual practice: a materially grounded encounter with the parts of Self we have exiled. What I call “Trashkin” offers a relational, ecologically rooted interpretation of Jungian shadow work, inviting us to reenchant even the most degraded, overlooked, and atrophied regions of psyche and planet. Forming kinship with waste becomes not a descent into despair, but a gesture toward belonging, reciprocity, and repair.
(This work has a correlated artistic submission.)