TEMPE, AZ – A massive hydroponics tower by interdisciplinary artist Steven Yazzie (Diné/Laguna Pueblo) glows with bright white light inside the gallery space at the Arizona State University (ASU) Art Museum, where its spiral form echoes Robert Smithson’s famous “Spiral Jetty.” It’s only been more than half a century since Smithson made his earthwork sculpture on the northeast shore of Great Salt Lake in Utah, where it remains a marker for the ecologically focused Land Art movement launched in the 1960s.
Entitled “Yuméweuš” (2022), Yazzie’s tower houses amaranth plants grown with seeds sourced from Native Seeds/SEARCH in Tucson. Working inside the museum, located on the university’s Tempe campus, Yazzie surrounds the base of the totemic cylindrical garden with sand paintings that combine Native American and scientific imagery. On a nearby wall, he projected excerpts from the land identification used by ASU and Tempe, referring to the violence of settlers ’colonialism and its effects on indigenous cultures.
Yazzie is one of eight artists featured on New Earthworks, an exhibition that brings the historical, cultural, social, and economic basis of contemporary Land Art to three gallery spaces, allowing visitors to explore the connections between human activity and changes in the world without directly encountering monumental works of traditional Land Art in their natural settings. The exhibition includes basic sculpture, photos, videos, and drawings, along with texts and objects created by artists in their studios. Everything was done over the past decade, providing a glimpse into how artists have interacted with ecologies since the early days of Land Art.
The exhibition was curated by Mark Dion, a New York-based artist whose multidisciplinary practice incorporates scientific methods, and Heather Sealy Lineberry, curator emeritus for the ASU Art Museum. They present works in three broad groups: research-based installations, works that respond to people’s ways of claiming or reclaiming space, and projects that facilitate concrete actions toward ecological justice.
The artwork showing a strong connection to field research laid the foundation for the exhibition. With three large projection screens hanging in a triangle around three small wooden stools, and a smaller monitor nearby, a diver is shown swimming in the ocean with a white plastic laundry basket filled with coral. Titled “Swirling” (2020), the four-channel video is the work of Virginia-based artist Hope Ginsburg, diver and videographer Matt Flowers, and composer Joshua Quarles. While demonstrating the practice of coral farming and reef restoration, they suggest collaboration between species as an important element of stability for all life forms and ecosystems.
Also in this first gallery space, Sam Van Aken’s “Peach Strand” (2017), consisting of 1,000 peach seeds in cotton thread, hangs on a white wall next to New York (2015–2021), which includes fruit tree specimens displayed in horizontal display cases or stored in black boxes. The artist also planted and sculpted a peach tree on the ASU campus as part of the exhibition.
This gallery contains several works by another New York-based artist, David Brooks, who explored biodiversity in the Amazon forest using drone footage capturing the effects of capture. Five aluminum cast sculptures from his series “Death Mask for Landscape” (2022) are among them. Grouped into floor installations, the pieces capture parts of the Amazon before they are removed, speaking to the loss of additional landscapes in the hands of humanity.
Climbing up a flight of concrete stairs, spectators reach a large gallery on the highest level of the museum, where they are faced with artwork that sets a completely different tone. The size and materiality of Scott Hocking’s (2020) “Arkansas Traveler” sculpture suggests the extent of the environmental and cultural degradation caused by driving for expansion to the west. The Michigan-based artist built his piece using a 40-foot-tall steel windmill and fiberglass fishing boat, which he covered with black paint made from burnt animal bones. Carolina Caycedo’s (2018) sculpture “Milk” made with materials that includes a tar-dipped artisanal fishing net hangs near a small hole in the closer part of the gallery, where additional works can be seen. by the Los Angeles -based artist.
In this space, Caycedo’s single-channel video titled “Apariciones/Apparitions” (2018) features Brown, Black, and LGBTQ+ dancers filling a historic White space, the Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens near Los Angeles, with movements taken from African and folk dance. The piece is particularly effective in highlighting the ways contemporary artists are raising awareness about the intersections of ecological and cultural degradation, while expanding concepts about the nature of earthworks.
Before descending the concrete stairs to the other side of the museum, viewers can see a timeline of Land Art installations spanning more than 50 years, setting the works of art on display in their artistic historical context.
The third gallery contains works that directly focus on making the action. In addition to Yazzie’s hydroponics tower, space holds Mary Mattingly’s “Ecotopian Library” (2020–2022) envisioned as a tool kit for rethinking futures in the midst of climate change. The library includes books, videos, oral history, artifacts, and more. The gallery also features the “Mobile ECO-STUDIO” (2013–2022) installation of desert ArtLAB, a Colorado-based collaborative arts with artists April Bojorquez and Matt Garcia, whose work centers on the practical application of Indigenous and Chicanx knowledge of food sovereignty and ecological justice.
The Desert ArtLAB will feature educational presentations in Phoenix neighborhoods during the exhibition, and the “Ecotopian Library” will continue to expand as artists, indigenous knowledge holders, scientists, and others in the region contributes their stories, digital files, and objects. After the show closes, Yazzie plans to donate his hydroponics tower to the Phoenix Indian Center, a nonprofit that serves the American Indian community.
Includes artists in New Earthworks contains a call to action included with the Desert ArtLAB installation, where the bold text on the wall is described as “Huehuetlatolli/Words of the Elders.” The last thing the viewers encountered as they exited the gallery, were the words read in the section: “Act! Take care of the things on earth. ”
New Earthworks continues at the Arizona State University Art Museum (51 East 10th Street, Tempe, Arizona) until Sept. 25. The exhibition was curated by Mark Dion and Heather Sealy Lineberry, ASU Art Museum curator emeritus.
