Deseret
Deseret was what the first Morning settlers called the traditional and ancestral homeland of the Paiute, Shoshone, Goshute, Ute, Diné, Zuni, Havasupai, and Hopi, along with the Ancestral Pueblos of New Mexico, all of whom were forcibly displaced by the arrival of white colonialism. In exploring this area, one is made well-aware that the boundaries and borders currently in place to separate the four corners are nothing more than fictitious lines in the sand. This ongoing work is an exploration of the ecology of what is now the states of Utah & Arizona.
The landscape of Deseret feels like a wound, like a collection of lacerations and bruises from a lucid dream that happened to someone else. Ever-changing, every moment that passes works to gouge this beauty from the earth, as the wind and water dance through it, as the choreography of time flaunts its indifference. A labor of love, like the scrapes across your back found after the right kind of romance, there’s a softness to even the most jagged cracks and edges. It’s in places like this that we’re taught how to breathe. It’s in places like this that we’re reminded how an unfinished landscape, much like ourselves, is an experiment in proving just how beautiful a wound can be.
