In the drawings and text on Death Valley I am interested in the subject of travel, tourism, and exploration – in the context of the American desert. The project’s centerpiece is a relationship that ends during a road trip through the California desert. By inserting the story of two lovers into a body of appropriated text from mid-century travel guides, cowboy westerns and historical & scientific discourse, Death Valley sets out to map the uneven transmutation of relationship and sign in contrast with the ostensible timelessness of the desert – the setting of the series as well as one of its characters. The project began as a piece of life-writing and was then developed into a series of drawings and lecture-performances at the Banff Centre for the Arts in 2009. The drawings are a collage of photos of Death Valley – from different time periods and taken by different people, namely Ansel Adams – producing a magical-realism effect, complementing the form of the story.

Death Valley was realized during a residency at the Banff Centre for the Arts and partly supported by the Cliff Lede Family Charitable Foundation.