Border Work

Border Work is an ongoing collaboration between myself and political geographer Dr. Leslie Gross-Wyrtzen. We explore the politics and aesthetics of borders as well as the boundaries of our disciplines . We are interested in how such explorations can disrupt traditional binaries such as outside/inside, included/excluded, mobile/immobile, nature/culture, citizen/alien asking, “How can we think about borders as inscribing spaces of refuge and hospitality rather than unfreedom and immobility?” Through invitation – into the creative process, into place, into relation – we seek to foster new imaginings of what is possible.

Forthcoming Co-Authored Book Chapter: Working the border: Interdisciplinary encounters across intellectual, material and political boundaries, Challenging Borders: Contingencies and Consequences, edited by S. McManus and P. McKenzie-Jones. Athabasca University Press (at press).

Border Disruption

Exhibited at The Line Crossed Us: New Directions in Border Studies Conference, Lethbridge University, Lethbridge, Canada

Material: individually suspended strips of archival print on matte film, 28 ft x 5 ft [dimensions/composition variable with each installation] 2019

Fugitive::grounds

Exhibited at the Desert Futures: Sahara Conference, Yale University, New Haven, CT

Material: military-grade camouflage netting, video projection, 2022

In this work we consider the desert as borderland. Desert landscapes are often depicted as empty or liminal spaces, the boundaries between human geographies. In fact, deserts have always been important sites of mobility and place-making—spaces of connectivity that archive state and imperial narratives, projects, and memories, but also more fugitive histories, knowledges, practices and relations. This interactive installation invites us to consider the desert as a fugitive landscape, one that resists the disciplining power of the state, even as the state tries to mobilize it as a barrier. Deserts are shifty and shifting places, sites of exposure and refuge, memory and forgetting, sociality and solitude. Utilizing permeable boundaries, video projection and sound, Fugitive:: Grounds invites us not only to approach geography differently, but also each other.