Our inability to see the land as an intrinsic part of us and vice versa contributes to our violent divisions; racism, transphobia, and war, among others. The land is a living, breathing entity we are in a deeply symbiotic, oftentimes parasitic, relationship with.
In The Earth is a Body in Transition, I create material, ritual, and visual parallels between the human body and the earth body through a trans- lens; transsexual, transformative, transitional, trans-national, and transitory. The drawings, photographs, sculptures, and installations in this exhibition explore various acts of transformation occurring throughout nature: prescribed burns, species mimicry, hybridization, transsexualism, community uprisings, and the movement of tectonic plates within the earth’s crust.
The exhibition begins with the Controlled Burn series; in this work, I consider the history of controlled, or prescribed, burns. I recontextualize this practice as a metaphor for seemingly harmful acts that, in reality, enable a particular ecosystem to thrive while preventing much larger catastrophes in the future. In the back room, two sculptures from the Amalgamations series sit within an immersive drawing installation. Downstairs, a second installation situates the overlaid imagery within the topographical map of the valley in Northern Norway where my paternal grandfather was born. This is the landscape I have the longest and deepest relationship with so here, I investigate the edges between my body and this land I share a name with. The work demonstrates how I and my ancestral lands meld, and how, ultimately, to be human is to be of nature - in all of its queerness and complexity.
-
The Earth is a Body in Transition
10.12.24 - 11.10.24
HAIR+NAILS Gallery, Minneapolis MN
In The Earth is a Body in Transition, I create material, ritual, and visual parallels between the human body and the earth body through a trans- lens; transsexual, transformative, transitional, trans-national, and transitory. The drawings, photographs, sculptures, and installations in this exhibition explore various acts of transformation occurring throughout nature: prescribed burns, species mimicry, hybridization, transsexualism, community uprisings, and the movement of tectonic plates within the earth’s crust.
The exhibition begins with the Controlled Burn series; in this work, I consider the history of controlled, or prescribed, burns. I recontextualize this practice as a metaphor for seemingly harmful acts that, in reality, enable a particular ecosystem to thrive while preventing much larger catastrophes in the future. In the back room, two sculptures from the Amalgamations series sit within an immersive drawing installation. Downstairs, a second installation situates the overlaid imagery within the topographical map of the valley in Northern Norway where my paternal grandfather was born. This is the landscape I have the longest and deepest relationship with so here, I investigate the edges between my body and this land I share a name with. The work demonstrates how I and my ancestral lands meld, and how, ultimately, to be human is to be of nature - in all of its queerness and complexity.
-
The Earth is a Body in Transition
10.12.24 - 11.10.24
HAIR+NAILS Gallery, Minneapolis MN