Central to my practice is the belief that process and labor can reveal as much if not more than the finished object. I create Fingerprints as tools to exercise my ability to situate myself within an environment, as well as a way to create a record or impression of that site physically, without relying on the camera as a mediator. Utilizing fairly accessible materials, in this case packing tape and time, I am able to relieve myself of the burden of preciousness. My goal is to simply find my way in an environment, unravel the tape, make contact between the adhesive and the environment, and then leave it to collect what it will. At the culmination of the process, I steadily re-roll the tape onto itself, bringing along the minute particles that make up the site. In this way, I am effectively making a scan of the landscape, making a photograph. Rather than capturing and freezing a moment in time, Fingerprints allow the landscape to become a participant in its own recording, a partner in the creation of my memory. My desire is not to contain a site into a stagnant image, but rather to transcribe its own materials into a form that is recognizable, yet transformed. While the Fingerprints exist as objects, and the performance of their creation is documented via film photography, the crux of the work is in the practice and labor of carrying out these small interventions. They exist most effectively as tools of seeing, and as aides in recollecting a place.
Created as part of the 2022 Land Arts of the American West Graduate Program
