Curatorial Rationale

Through this exhibition, I wish to bring light to areas at my community's periphery. Though rural communities are crucial to food production and the stability of cities throughout the United States, their stories often go untold. This phenomenon is astoundingly evident in Northern California, where many rural communities bear the scars of neglect, urban sprawl, and dwindling populations. Small one or two-road towns accessible only by small state routes often have vacant, decaying buildings, neighbored by oversized energy infrastructure. Though some smiling faces remain enclosed in gates surrounding the borders of small family-owned farms, it is difficult to overlook the large corporate farms occupying nearby land. I believe that the situations I’ve depicted through my artworks are a microcosm of a national tendency. As such, I hope to transmit this understanding to viewers of my exhibition. Additionally, I would like to address another core issue at the heart of my artwork, which is the role of nature within all of these scenes. Mass urban development, enormous farms, and the destruction of small farming towns reinforce accelerating damage to the environment. However, I wish to convey that there is still hope left, and that it is not too late to reverse some of the damage we have caused. 

I used photography as my primary medium throughout my exhibition. Through photography, I was able to show candid depictions of the issues I was attempting to depict. I chose to do an exclusively monochromatic tone, with one of the four artworks having a sepia tone. While taking photos of buildings, I noticed that monochromatic photographs can highlight texture in a far more impactful way than full-color photographs do. Emphasizing texture allows the viewer to develop a deeper, more personal understanding of the state some of these towns lie in, as viewing the photos becomes a much more tactile, personal experience. Most of my photographs are of buildings within rural areas. However, I have one triptych that serves as a photo narrative, telling the story of someone’s migration out of a rural community into the city. 

The layout of my exhibition is set up to draw the viewer into my central artwork, Expansion, which neatly summarizes a majority of the themes present throughout the exhibition. The rest of my artworks are placed radially around Expansion, and each of them serves as a vignette into the phenomena and issues I wish to address.