Monument, digital video (loop), 2020.
This piece appropriates the iconic last scene from John Ford's "The Searchers" (1956), shot in Monument Valley (Dinétah/Navajo Nation) and takes on the idea of erasure, starting with the dominant narrative and character that obscures the story of the real-life setting. Without the trope of the rugged individual in the foreground, viewers might shift their focus to the film’s background. At the same time John Ford's cast and crew were in Monument Valley, uranium companies were mining in the area, employing many of the same Navajo families that were also hosts and played roles in the films. This was part of a regional uranium boom to get domestic uranium to build nuclear weapons during the Cold War. It’s interesting how all these histories intersected in pop-culture, and played out on the silver screen unbeknownst to people at the time. The soundtrack is from the film, slowed down just a bit, and one of the only audio recordings of the atomic tests from the nearby Nevada Test Site was— added. This test grouping, “Annie” from the Upshot-Knothole series, is what contaminated Snow Canyon, Utah with radioactive fallout before the shooting of "The Conqueror"— which purportedly was a significant cause in a third of the cast and crew developing cancers, which ultimately killed 48 of them including Wayne himself.
2020: a year in flames installed at Contemporary Arts Center New Orleans
2020: a year in flames, digital video installation in a abandoned storefront in downtown Miami, 2021
This installation takes clips from news footage of wildfires and protest fires from around the world that occurred in 2020—a year marked by myriad simultaneous forms of devastation, unrest and existential consequences. Fires and source clockwise from right: El Dorado Fire, CA (OC Hawk); Troublesome Fire, CO (CBS4 Denver); Australia Bush fires (Four Corners); Brazilian Amazon fires (Al Jazeera); Wendy’s fire in Atlanta, GA after the death of Rayshard Brooks (Bloomberg); Bobcat Fire, CA (OnScene.TV); police van fire after the death of George Floyd in New York, NY (AFP TV); Creek Fire, CA (OnScene.TV)
slow burn, installation view, 2016
slow burn (clip), 4-channel digital video installation (loop), 2016
slow burn installed at FREE!, 2018
road runner (fast clip), 2020, digital video (loop)
10,000 tickets to the second coming, 2018
second coming ad, digital video (59 sec), 2018
Cracked, collaboration with Agustina Woodgate, Kenny Riches and Sebastian Bellver, 2015, digital video
sun,set, two-channel video installation (loop), 2014
sun,set installed at Rubell Family Collection, 2015
repose, super 8mm transferred to digital video, 2014