Installed in Labored Landscapes (where the hand meets the ground), a solo exhibition at the Fitchburg Art Museum, September 21, 2019—January 12, 2020.
Painting installation. Oil on canvas 2020
Each painting is 12x30 feet covering the entire walls of the exhibition space.
I interviewed former inhabitants of Chuquicamata (a mining town in the north of Chile) after their relocation in 2008 due to environmental devastation and mine expansion. These more than 20 interviews were documented in the video as I was thinking of creating a video piece. After trying the video pieces in exhibition spaces, I realized that the intimacy and weight of the experiences were not honored by the format, and decided to change the project completely. I turned the bodies and the gestures attempting to describe the place they used to call home into landscapes themselves for viewers to inhabit. I discovered that language was not descriptive enough of the potency of their lived experience and that the memory of the place was carried and better carried in the body. Body was location.
Photograph: Charles Sternaimolo.
Oil on canvas, 30’ x 12’. 2020
Oil on canvas, 2020
Oil on canvas, 2020
Oil on canvas, 2020
Oil on canvas, photographs, 2020
Photographs, 2020