Shallows Unfolding, as viewed at night after sundown.
Installed at New Mexico Museum of Art Vladem Contemporary Window Box Gallery, 2025, Light/water enlarger, river water, cottonwood leaves, dried mud, pigment print photographs from scanned silver gelatin photograms, vinyl, photographs on transparency film
Video Documentation by Mariano Rossetti.
Synthesizing the act of the sun rising over the river and the process of UV wastewater treatment, Shallows Unfolding uses a spotlight to project through a sealed box of water collected from the Rio Grande. Representations of flow, evaporation, condensation, and human intervention are evidenced in large-scale photographic prints that overtake the space. Collected materials from the dried riverbed intersect with printed matter, altered by the steady projection of ripples from the box above, which amplify and become more visible as the sun sets. The resulting work places the river as a fluid being, and brings the complicated histories of power, agency, and control over water to the fore.
-New Mexico Museum of Art
Scaled-up scan of silver gelatin photogram of evaporated river water from the Rio Grande. Sediment, leaves, and minerals leave their trace, showing a map of what’s left when the water dries up.
Detail: Suspended from the ceiling, a spotlight projects through agitating river water and leaves inside a tank.