Altar (2023)

Presented at Transborder Art, Governor's Island

“Altar” is an exhibition of multiple site-responsive works, resurrected into one immersive installation in a historic house on Governor's Island. In dialogue with the landscapes of the Catskills, New Mexico, and Finland, as well as Governor’s Island itself, each piece questions our human relationship with the land, exploring notions of empathy, mutuality, and belonging. In the unique site of a house on Colonel's Row, with its militaristic and environmental history, the installation also examines the contradictory ideologies of “home” within a settler colonial framework — not only as a place where individual cycles mesh with the rhythms of a particular earth, but as an ideal used to uphold systems of power and displacement. 

Through the repetitive rhythms of daily tending, the mental space of devotion, and by inviting quiet conversations seated in the intimacy of a handmade circle, the installation explores the transformative potential of a ritualistic relationship with nature and each other. It presents the idea that an altar is both co-created through the lived experience of each landscape, and something that you carry within yourself, no matter how far you range from home; it envisions home as the physical nexus for intimate and reciprocal relationships, where the impulse to build yields to the desire for rest, and safety is psychological rather than physical possession of land.