VisArts Center Rockville, MD April 27 - May 27 2018

This body of work investigates how man extracts value from the land. I created carved maps of landscapes with precious resources and painful pasts. Blemishes and flaws are revealed in the grains beneath the surface of the ply as the terrains are traced using computer numeric control. I imagine a future where there is nothing left to mine and where these relics with embedded cryptocurrency mining computers are all that we have left.

Some of the works’ formal references are drawn from religious funerary rites and American quilts. They explore aesthetics of various power structures and reflect on histories of colonization of lands caught in the crossfire of humans’ thirst for power and material possession. Using dyes made from soils collected from these sites, I constructed quilts as both a reference for land plots and lotteries and connotations of gridded games that emphasize acquisition.

An added layer to the exhibit is that some works can be scanned with the viewers' phones to reveal digital relics composed of images and 3d scanned stones from my visits and interviews. Upon entering the AR website, power is taken from the viewer's device and is used to mine cryptocurrency. This dynamic relationship of authority, permission, and control relates back the subject of coloniazation and the mistreatment of people and lands alike.