#zoeleonardalrio

[artbookdap]

As border crossings soar, we’re looking at ‘Zoe Leonard: Al río / To the River,' published by @hatjecantzverlag & @mudamlux⁠ ⁠ Featured images are reproduced from the artist's two-volume, 592-page project documenting the one-thousand-mile-plus river boundary shared by the United States and Mexico. Featuring 350 reproductions and an anthology of writings by a wealth of international artists, journalists, poets and scholars, this publication presents a multifaceted portrait of the highly politicized and deeply symbolic border-river known as the Río Bravo in Mexico and the Rio Grande in the United States. ⁠ ⁠ Underneath all of its fraught history, C.J. Alvarez concludes in his opening essay, “the river has not yet been robbed of all its mystery, nor of its power. Like all civilizations, ours too will someday decline or become something else. The border will not be there forever. Perhaps new volcanos will erupt and reshape the watershed once again. Maybe some future generation will start a process of unbuilding. Possibly the places we know today as the ‘United States’ and ‘Mexico’ will erode into some new type of polity. When I imagine a time in the distant future, when all of us are long gone, I take comfort in picturing the river once again running great and wild.”⁠ ⁠ Read more via linkinbio.⁠ ⁠ #zoeleonard #zoeleonardtotheriver #zoeleonardalrio #border #usmexicoborder #bordercrossing @zoe_leonard_studio @droughtdeciduous https://www.instagram.com/p/CeEHkSUukk0/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[artbookdap]

In the current issue of @friezeofficial Jessica Lynne speaks with Zoe Leonard about 'Al Río / To the River,' a large-scale work comprising hundreds of photographs of the Rio Grande/Río Bravo, which was recently shown @mudamlux and @museedartmodernedeparis and is forthcoming in book form from @hatjecantzverlag⁠ ⁠ Leonard notes, "I started this work with the question: What does it mean to ask a body of water to perform a political task? I was interested in looking at our human relationship to this river and what would be revealed through that observation. I began photographing in late 2016, shortly after the US general election. My idea was to follow and photograph the river along the 2,000 kilometers where it is used to demarcate the international border, from Ciudad Juárez and El Paso downstream to the Gulf of Mexico. I wanted to observe the complex nature of the river itself, the water as it winds through the landscape, but also to consider the built environment we’ve constructed alongside, into and across the riverbed. The photographs act as a kind of cross-section looking into situations where many different factors are active simultaneously. The work raises questions of immigration, commerce and trade, but also climate change, drought, water usage, wildlife migration and survival. Questions of food supply and labour politics. Policing and surveillance. Citizenship and belonging.…"⁠ ⁠ Read the full interview via linkinbio.⁠ ⁠ #zoeleonard #zoeleonardalrio #zoeleonardtotheriver @zoe_leonard_studio @lynne_bias #riogrande #riobravo #usmexicoborder #border #bordercrossing⁠ https://www.instagram.com/p/CdNyj0Iu1WI/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=