RECENT PROJECTS

Groundwater

“Groundwater” is a developing project that invites comparisons between historic, scientific, communal and personal perspectives of the loss of centuries-old groundwater in California’s Central Valley.  Selections from the project were recently exhibited at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History.

A sketch of Friant Dam in California’s Central Valley | Photo credit: Hillary Mushkin

“Groundwater” focuses on an extremely affected area in the San Joaquin Valley north of Fresno between the small farming communities of El Nido and Fairmead. Due to hydrological engineering, groundwater pumping and climate change over the past century, this area has sunk more than any other in the Central Valley. “Groundwater” includes drawings, video, audio, scientific visual ephemera and installation. Together, these materials tell polyvocal stories situating the climate crisis as lived experience in the “land of milk and honey”.


Border Ecologies

The US border is frequently discussed in relation to surveillance technologies and walls along a linear boundary. These projects break apart popular conceptions of the border as a single line within a particular geography. Instead the border is redefined through the lens of broadly applied legal policies and scientific ways of seeing, representing and classifying the natural world and inhabitants.

survey to surveillance

Survey to Surveillance shows the connection between the 19th century scientific land survey the US government used to establish the US-Mexico border and the contemporary database systems used to police it today. The project explores the concepts of scientific and technological objectivity in the formation and policing of national identity. It contrasts official government efforts to codify, naturalize and mechanize a Eurocentric view of the region with diverse hand-drawings that push back on such boundaries of control.

Three Border Ecologies

Three Border Ecologies reconsiders the US-Mexico border as neither a line nor border infrastructure delineating the nation’s boundaries. The US is legally policed by the US Customs and Border Patrol anywhere within a 100-mile ring around the entire country. This ring is known as the “100-mile border zone.” Three Border Ecologies reveals how the border is, and has always been, defined through seemingly abstract laws and interpretations of the law that justify containment.