Artist and Photographer

Valle Mortis is an audiovisual exploration into the temporal crisis that is our past, present and future as humanity looks to Mars as a speculative counterpart to life on Earth. The work depicts the topographical similarities between Death Valley and Martian terrain through visually arresting transitioning compositions. In the works, the artist's aerial photographs of Death Valley are juxtaposed with Mars images from the HiRise (High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment) by NASA/JPL/UArizona. Through lenticular printing techniques, the viewer witnesses a photograph of Earth transition to its likeness on Mars. Color transitions to black and white, the present transitions to the future, and the future transitions to the past. The result is a celestial body of photographs that are suspended in time, neither quite here nor there, at once familiar and unknowable. These photographs require bodily engagement from the viewer to receive the full effect - the image transforms only when the viewer orbits around it.

A single-channel video presents a slow tempoed, meditative aerial survey of Death Valley’s endorheic Badwater Basin. Scattered human footsteps dance below sea level around the dried ancient lake bed, off-roading vehicle tracks have gradually become part of the landscape and traces of present life mingle with remnants of past life. The delicate tension between natural topographies and human presence linger as we follow the the path of a man-made road. Martian audio data from the NASA Perseverance rover has been synthesized and composed into a deep droning soundscape that vibrates and oscillates, its repetition representing the cyclical nature of humankind’s obsession with a future that is ever bound to the past. Exhibited at Sage Culture gallery in Los Angeles April - June 2023. Video and Sound by Brooke Holm.