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 mark

Site 3: Wildlife research center

This group of pieces originates from time shadowing biologists at a wildlife research center that is part of an agricultural school. The research is primarily for wildlife “management,” which is a governmental strategy of population control of animals who are considered a nuisance to humans. Wild boar, a nocturnal “game species,” were one animal of study, closely monitored and surveilled. I was moved by the ways in which the wild boar asserted agency and evaded human control.

***The dark / is your mother***
2022-2024
62” X 41”
Cold wax, graphite oil stick on wood panel

***Wild boar watching / in the night***
2022-2024
62” X 41”
Cold wax, graphite powder on wood panel

***When we saw her marks / the ecologist said, “That’s almost / a kind of sad / animal art, isn’t it?”***
2022-2024
Three sets of 2 pieces; set 1: 48” X 30”, 48” X 24”; set 2: 48” X 30”, 48” X 24”; set 3: 48” X 26”, 48” X 24”
Graphite, graphite oil stick, graphite powder, acrylic medium, canvas, paint brushes, wood panel
Description: “Marking” is a term in wildlife biology for capturing and securing a GPS collar around an animal’s neck for tracking and surveillance purposes. After a “marking” of a wild boar sow, I took images of the marks that the sow had made with mud on the walls of the trap, in her panic and fear before she was sedated. I used the photographic references to recreate three corners of the trap with her marks, in the form of paintings. Given that “mark-making” in art is often considered an emotive, expressive form of visual language, this piece challenges the notion that the human hand is always the upper hand, and that animal agency is something to be controlled and contained. On the exterior-facing sides, are two objects-- one the head of a wild boar, the other a GPS collar-- created out of hog bristle paint brushes, a tool used by painters to make their “marks.” My staining of the bristles dark, relates to the way that, as soon as domesticated pigs become feral, turning back into their wild boar selves, their white bristles turn back to black.

Source Images: