Rebecca Peel

Lives and works in Alma, CO, USA

Artist statement

At present, visitorship to public lands of the United States is reaching numbers never before seen. Surrounding towns are spilling over, housing infrastructure is being strained, environments are being challenged – and yet, the seductive draw of experiencing unmitigated wilderness is piqued and self-perpetuating. Why is this so? How does a perceived physical and social detachment from what we’ve labeled “nature” compel us to want all the more some fleeting intimacy? Whatever lens we’re given to look through, it’s nearly impossible now to detach from a bias of modernization. Bears and birds raiding trash containers, mountain goats climbing human-poured concrete, helicopters rounding up wild horses, fatal interactions between wildlife and automobiles; however disentangled we try to keep our human infrastructure from intact wilderness, these conflations are, from our current perspective, more the rule than the exception. With the historical – and recently surging – cultural interest in the outdoors, these areas offer a radical type of acquaintanceship with vastness, danger, and what’s left of quickly dwindling natural spaces. Thus exists an opportune, if not a necessary, reminder of how these places, too, are a product of modernity. These odd interactions and interventions still exist, even if they are cloaked in a perception of untouched purity. My project, ongoing and multi-instrumental, makes consideration of this mutual integration – overlap, antagonism, unexpected...

Artwork