Afield

2022— current

“Out beyond ideas
of wrongdoing and right doing,
there is a field.
I’ll meet you there.”
-Rumi

Afield is a multi-media project– consisting of paintings, drawings, sculpture and a forthcoming book of poetry– that center on the agency, vitality and mystery of other animals. The work derives drawings and written documentation of artistic research that I conducted in 2022 at four sites of human-animal interaction in Sweden. The animal subjects of the works are all individuals encountered at the sites, and while the human is not visible in the works, the human gaze is implied. Using ambiguity to evoke the specific quality of each animal’s presence, Afield creates a contemplative space for viewers to engage with questions, rather than answers, about what it means to care for and care about the lives of other animals through proximity and distance.

A box

Site 2: Cognitive zoology research lab

These works derive from sketches made in a cognitive zoology lab that was studying the cognitive capacities of alligators. Observing how these tests done in sterile environments will never understand the extent of what an alligator knows, I made these works to embody the etymology of cognition, which means “to know together.”