Today we are flooded with artistic and documentary works showing the devastation that humans have inflicted on the environment. They are all about endings: extinction, apocalypse, collapse. My work takes a longer view. I revisit landscapes that have been continuously altered by humans over decades, even centuries, and show the surprising ways in which they continue to evolve. I unearth multiple layers of human engagement with a place, from consumption and trade to myth, ritual, and restoration. In the process, I imagine humans not only as agents of destruction, but also of renewal.
We walk along a path through a reclaimed urban river, marveling at the sight of herons fishing among the reeds. But we forget that it was once a deadly repository of industrial waste, and we ignore the stories of local activists, scientists and city officials who painstakingly engineered this restoration over the course of multiple generations.
By unearthing archival and contemporary photographs, maps, charts and other documents, and by making paintings that juxtapose these ephemeral moments, I seek to transcend our blinkered understanding of our place in time. I also hope to expand our sense of how we might still shape the future, if we are capable of seeing our place in a chain of human intentions—both infamous and admirable—that precedes our age and will long outlast it.
