CITY ON THE HILL

City on the Hill (2019)

FOUND MATERIAL, PAPER, SAWDUST, STEEL, PROJECTED MOVING IMAGE

84” x 18” x 60”

This installation considers the fraught relationship between nature and the contemporary American urban environment. I invoke John Winthrop’s mythical “City Upon the Hill”, a historic American model community, to contrast with the unflattering realities of flawed and damaging contemporary urban policy. I project moving images of both nature and urban environmental destruction onto a sickly body of the modern city. The projections and sculpture highlight the disparity between the proclaimed success of urban America and housing shortages, broken infrastructure, and environmental destruction which mar our everyday. City on the Hill raises questions about environmental exhaustion in relation to the built environment, climate change, and American exceptionalism. City on the Hill consists of two single channel videos projected onto a sculptural form.

The piece was first installed in the Gidwitz lobby of the Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts in Chicago, IL.