BODY/ROCK

2018–2019

The landscapes of Utah provide an entry into the American West, which is to say a scale shift, a seismic, perceptual one. They make humans feel small and insignificant. Utah is a place of religious and spiritual reverence, one where dinosaurs once roamed. Yet, it exists outside of the aesthetics of contemporary time, it is an abstraction, holding time in its layers of geological color and form. I return to this place year after year to be inspired by nature. My practice is contingent on this connection to the land, and to deserts specifically. Over time my work has expanded to address urgent environmental concerns, but it always begins with the body in the landscape.

In this video, I wear a dress made from images of my freckled skin, which camouflage with the desert earth. This place has imprinted itself on me. The physical and metaphysical landscapes have interwoven into a sculpture that collapses subject and object. This piece makes the link between nature and culture explicit by featuring a site where figure and ground merge, where the earth and the body become one.