Description:
A block of granite with a laser-etched image of a planted forest around the entirety of its surface appears to be sinking into the ground. I learned, while living in Sweden, a forest of oak trees had been ordered by the king nearly 200 years ago with the intention to build a fleet of battleships; done at a time when Sweden’s population was facing severe famine. Recently, the current king was notified that his “order” was ready. This anachronistic planning of the former king is an example of the prospective thinking that we move forward with in our attempts to reconcile the cataract of our current desires with their ultimate sustainability as needs change over time. The piece forces us to question how narrowly our conception of what is to come is shaped by our present experience and knowledge.
In 2016, just after having made this piece I took my mother back to Moldova for the first time since she fled as a refugee. During the trip, I had a deeply uncanny experience. Walking through the cemeteries there I noticed that many headstones were large pieces of black polished granite with deep angles cut into their tops, a shape which signifies a broken stone, a metaphor for a life cut short. This realization was unsettling because I had no prior knowledge of this trope, it was as if this had been passed onto me as an epigenetic memory and translated itself into this piece. I have been connecting my work on the losses experienced by refugees and migrants to ecological and climate collapse, memory, tradition, borders, and belonging. These subjects are all intertwined, and it is only through dealing with our political and ecological issues systemically can we hope to find solutions to these exponentially increasing problems.
"Succession," asks what does it mean to be caught within the fragmented moment of a contemporary condition and a future which may render it obsolete? The piece explores the disquieting experience in encountering a nature that is ordered and contained. The way we project speculative futures onto organic systems and maintain them in manners that subject them to our dominance and current eco-fashions. This is instead of understanding the system in a holistic fashion, a position from which we seem to be unable to reframe our perspectives toward. In continually testing the limits of the greater bio-system, the constant becomes the misalignment of its balance.
What does it mean to live in the Anthropocene, a geological epoch which will bear the trace of humans at every level? Up to this moment geological ages have only been received names when they no longer exist.
Title:
Succession
Year:
2016
Media:
Premium black granite, laser etched surface
Dimensions:
41” x 24” x 5.5”
