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○ FIELD NOTES IN THE VORTEX

‘Field Notes in the Vortex’  emerged from the wide open terrain of the High Desert of Southern California. The project spans writing, photography, performance, and artifact collecting as a means of documenting the evolution of my relationship to the land and my process of meeting kin. These field notes are insights into the metaphysical, as the body surrenders and portals open as time and space shift and bend; stories about intimate encounters with fellow desert beings and bodies; and learnings I've cultivated as a child of diaspora about the rituals and processes that allow us to root and find belonging, wherever we are.

The High Desert is a region in the western part of the Mojave Desert and is the ancestral lands of the Cahuilla, Chemehuevi, Mojave, and Serrano indigenous tribes. (This may be an incomplete list, as the High Desert is a vernacular region with non-discrete boundaries.)

The following images are a zine prototype for an artist book I will be producing as an artist-in-residence with High Desert Test Sites at A-Z West in Joshua Tree, California, as well as Kala Art Institute in Berkeley, CA in winter and spring 2025.

Ink and thread on printer paper, 8.5 x 11 in (open), 2024