Serpent River Book & Serpent Table

Serpent River Book & Serpent Table is an installation that incorporates an artist’s
book that is part of a wider body of work called Be Damned. Developed over the past decade, Be Damned looks into how infrastructures developed to contain rivers, such as dams and channels, affect bodies of water as well as social bodies. Indigenous codexes from the Americas and maps of the Berlin Wall both served as inspiration in the development of the book, which contains images on one side and archival texts, poems and other texts written by the artist on the other.

In the installation, the visible face of the book shows images and texts in five sections that encompass indigenous understandings of rivers; relation and equilibrium within the river; the colonial, corporate and neo-colonial relationship to the river; and the consequences of that exploitation, especially when it gets out of control. Finally, the book presents the people who are affected by the corporate understanding of the common goods, and how they resist. Constructed to evoke the shape of a river, the installation guides us in an exploration of the maps, photos and struggles that connect us.