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Multimedia installation | Luna Chapel, Couse-Sharp Historic Site, Taos, New Mexico | Easter 2023

Borrowing motifs from both pagan and Christian lore, this installation was presented in an abandoned adobe chapel in Taos, New Mexico, over Easter weekend 2023. Developed in the lead up to the vernal equinox, the work utilizes projections to play with the balance between light and dark, themes which, in the context of the Christian holiday, are often read in terms of good and bad. The work is primarily composed of the storm-felled limb of a Siberian elm tree, a species that is considered highly invasive and yet serves an important climatary function in the otherwise dry brush desert landscape of this region. Below it, charcoal gathered from this winter’s routine brush burning speaks to the degradation of the native habitat as such invasive species take over. As a symbol of emergent spring, this piece pulls together all of these contrasting elements to examine the complexity of natural systems and humanity’s relationship to them.