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Collaboration with Stephanie Hankey (Loeb Fellow ’22), Michael Uwemedimo (Loeb Fellow ’22), and Jordan Weber (Loeb Fellow ’22), on Synthetic Landscapes 01, an exhibition that examines the regenerative future for two sites in ecological decline. One is near the Niger Delta, where the Escravos estuary opens onto the Atlantic. A multi-billion-dollar gas-to-liquids complex owned by Chevron occupies a giant sandfill dredged from surrounding creeks, while the nearby villages are vanishing into the ocean. Satellite imagery shows a dendritic tangle of creeks cut through by engineered geometries of oil extraction: pipeline trenches, wellhead pits, flare towers, and the trussed lines of tanker jetties. Oil spills can be seen from space.
The second site examined in Synthetic Landscapes is on the other side of the Atlantic. The flat of the Midwest’s industrial cropland is a pixelated plane of intensive agri-production, broken only by the turbulent swirls of deep green cyanobacteria massing in waterways fed by fertilizer runoff. Decades of mono-cropping and plot conglomeration have stripped soil nutrition, and aggressive agriculture practices have resulted in generations of racialized land inequity.
From microbial fuel cells which digest hydrocarbons to community concerts staged on replanted spill sites or rewilded croplands, Synthetic Landscapes 01 investigates land use in a way that not only questions who land belong to, but also how we belong to the land in such sites of struggle and celebrations.