GO WEST
For the Go West exhibition, curator Jill Dawsey was exploring myth, culture, ideology, and identity specific to the American west; through an array of different lenses and modalities. I created another version of into the west—a series based on the evolution, disappearance, and re-introduction of the modern horse in North America. Thinking of attributes of the west generally, and Salt Lake City and my own experience, the work touches on the social implications of the horse’s journey and how it changed the profile of the country, the West, and its inhabitants: the impact on Native Americans, soldiers, and later, pioneers; Manifest Destiny; transportation; the structure and layout of western cities and the development, eventually, of suburban areas. Later, breeding and manipulating horses for different human motives would begin. An interesting lineage beyond just that of the genus emerges from this evolution. This history, to me, embodied so much about the identity of the west. I hand cut seven different species in stacks from inexpensive white paper. The lack of importance in the material, the mutations that occurred through the act of cutting by hand, and the increasing amount of cut-outs of each evolution became something that dovetailed conceptually with the piece. They were installed in the space to actually run due west; the species evolving as they traversed the wall. This superimposed two evolutions—the horse’s hailing from the Old World and coming to the new, and from there continuing their journey in assisting in ‘winning the west.’