Detail View: Environmental Futures: Selected works from “Mapping Bodily Connections” series (Erika Osborne); Walking the River (Tania Candiani)

aahi0021811

Selected works from “Mapping Bodily Connections” series (Erika Osborne); Walking the River (Tania Candiani)

installation view of works by Erika Osborne (left) and Tania Candiani (right)

Erika Osborne artist's statement: The Journey of the Horizontal People is a future creation story telling of a group of people traveling from west to east, across the written page, contrary to the movement of the sun, but involuntarily and unconsciously allegiant to the trappings of time. With their bows, these wanderers sought out others like them, knowing that they could survive by finding these other clans who resided in the east, others who shared their linear cosmologies. It is told that throughout the journey, in their own passage of time, this group became the very people they were seeking.: A map is an abstraction – a cultural system designed for and designated to geographies and topographies in order to better understand what is too vast to be comprehended through experience alone. It is not until the maps leads us to at a vista, a grotto, or an individual tree that we enter the realm of tactile, sensory awareness – making the abstraction reality. // We see the sun cast its light on the tree, and we grasp why it favors growth in a particular direction. We feel the strong wind blowing off the mesa and we understand why the tree is so twisted and wild. We see a spray painted mark on its trunk and, all the sudden, we are aware of its destiny. It is then we are able to formulate a more complex understanding, fusing the overlays of topography, geography and human penetrations pulled from computers and government files, laid out on paper, and the juniper tree we have been sitting with for twelve hours, diligently drawing. When we pick up our pencil and leave, space has become place. The experience plots its mark upon our bodies and minds. We carry the familiarity of a small portion of the map away with us, knowing a little bit more about the world we occupy. // Tania Candiani artist's statement: The Water Office seeks to present, through artistic practices, a platform for dissenting voices to function as “trenches” in the “water wars” that were predicted the end of the last century and have already arrived. Inspired by Humboldt, the first scientist is talking about climate change, Tania Candiani recorded a literary, visual, and sound experience by walking between along the Potomac River, in Washington DC. The artist chose excerpts from Humboldt’s “Personal Narrative” book, where the botanist narrates the world as an interconnected system of three-dimensional times; all of this as an ecological system.This walk showed mechanisms of observation and emotional approach to the landscape, creating interconnections with the world of nature, through the perspective of the participants in a workshop. As a result, Walking the River shows a series of works: an audiovisual essay with recordings and a selection of texts from all participants in the workshop, Notebooks with drawings, frottages, and treasures collected during the walk along the river. As well as a wall installation of a selection of documentation, which was the result of my research at the Archives Center at the National Museum of American History in Smithsonian, mainly focused on collections related to the construction of the Washington Aqueduct and the Supply Commission of Water, as well as other materials found in old bookstores, and a representation of the Potomac river line assembled with stones from the same river.

2003-2015 (Osborne); 2019 (Candiani)

creation

Erika Osborne (American, active ca. 1995 to present)

female

Artist's statement: Erika Osborne received her BFA from the University of Utah in painting and drawing and her MFA from the University of New Mexico. Erika’s artwork deals with cultural connections to place and environment, which garnered her a Fullbright fellowship in 2019. She has exhibited extensively nationally and internationally, with over ten solo exhibitions and over 80 group exhibitions in recent years. She is currently an Associate Professor at Colorado State University.

Tania Candiani (Mexican, born 1974)

female

Artist's statement: The work of Tania Candiani, who was born in Mexico City, has developed in various media and practices that maintain an interest in the complex intersection between language systems -phonic, graphic, linguistic, symbolic and technological. She received Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship in 2018; a Guggenheim Fellowship Award in 2011; and an Award of Distinction at Prix Ars Electronica in 2013, among others. She represented Mexico, in collaboration with Luis Felipe Ortega, at the 56th Venice Biennale. Among her monographic books are Possessing Nature. Pavilion of Mexico (2015); and Cromática (upcoming in 2021).

Artists: Erika Osborne and Tania Candiani

climate change

landscapes (environments)

nature

ecology

maps (documents)

geography

topography (image-making)

environment (earth sciences concept)

climate

water resources

Co-Terminous (exhibition)

digital prints

drawings (visual works)

films (visual works)

maps (documents)

drawings

films

photographs

digital prints and graphite on paper (Osborne); HD Video (Candiani)

various dimensions (Osborne); running time: 00:15:36 (Candiani)

Union Hall (Denver, Colorado)

exhibition

Denver, Colorado

© Matthew Pevear

© Tania Candiani

© Erika Osborne

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University of Colorado Boulder

Art and Art History Visual Resources Center

Environmental Futures

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