How is it that Western humans think of themselves as the peak of natural selection and the only unnatural force on earth? As an artist/researcher I try to understand this human/nature tension. Through tongue-in-cheek critique and empathetic subversion, I question our foundational assumptions about the natural world and our relationships with and place within it. I connect these assumptions to ideas about the supposed naturalness of human exceptionalism, masculinity, white supremacy, and capitalism--the foundations of American culture. My works are an entanglement of performance, text, digital collage, video, community experience, and installation. My research is slow, embodied, and place-based, emphasizing the time and attention it takes to develop a lasting, visceral understanding of something. Through my work I want others to come away with an open, ongoing, multisensorial awareness of themself and the more-than-human world they are submerged within.
I am an eighth-generation Utahn, a Danish-British-Scottish-Welsh-U.S. American, and a child of Mormons. After repeatedly being forced out of their homes my ancestors migrated across the Great Plains into the Great Basin, forcing the indigenous inhabitants there out of their ancestral homelands. I was raised by the Virgin River, red sandstone cliffs, and Pine Valley mountains. After leaving Mormonism, this land is where I reformed my spirituality. I am in love with this land, land stolen from the Nuwuvi (Southern Paiutes). This is my home, but not my homeland. Mormonism, the culture of my origins, is no longer the culture I carry. This is where my current work emerges from.
[1] Shunryu Suzuki - Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind: Informal Talks on Zen Meditation and Practice
[2] Claire Pentecost - Beyond Face
I am an eighth-generation Utahn, a Danish-British-Scottish-Welsh-U.S. American, and a child of Mormons. After repeatedly being forced out of their homes my ancestors migrated across the Great Plains into the Great Basin, forcing the indigenous inhabitants there out of their ancestral homelands. I was raised by the Virgin River, red sandstone cliffs, and Pine Valley mountains. After leaving Mormonism, this land is where I reformed my spirituality. I am in love with this land, land stolen from the Nuwuvi (Southern Paiutes). This is my home, but not my homeland. Mormonism, the culture of my origins, is no longer the culture I carry. This is where my current work emerges from.
[1] Shunryu Suzuki - Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind: Informal Talks on Zen Meditation and Practice
[2] Claire Pentecost - Beyond Face
