An ongoing series of small works made in response to the Bureau of Land Management’s incessant helicopter roundups of wild horses and burros across the American West. Working at a modest scale, a reflection of the incremental, largely invisible nature of the removals to the broader public. While “the wild horse” as a symbol of image continues to evoke notions of grandeur and resilience, the reality of their treatment continues largely unabated as does the broader disappearance of wild animals from federally managed lands.
The palette draws from both ends of a cultural contradiction: the bone-dry ochres, searing blue skies, and ashen tones of the desert landscapes these animals actually inhabit, and the hyper-saturated hues of the “pretty pony” — the commercialized horse that dominates the American imagination. The gap between those two colors is the space this project of small-scale studies explores, documenting how the horse can be vanishing in one and ever ubiquitous in the other.
#keepwildhorseswild
#stoptheroundups
