Suné Woods 'To Sleep With Terra'

 'From here we go nowhere' 58in x 77in, 2015, mixed media collage

To Sleep With Terra consists of collage, works on paper, and video focused on the social phenomena that indoctrinate brutality and hatred. I am creating my own topographies that are gleaned from science, travel, and geographic books and magazines of the past fifty years. Many of these images are valorized for their majestic beauty and their narratives of space or land exploration. 

Throughout history images from outer space to the western frontier are tethered to conquest endeavors and exploitation. Photography was used as advertisements and propaganda to fund exploratory campaigns to further Western expansionism. Popular culture continues to circulate claims of our nation’s right to expand its boundaries and increase repression through films, news media, and television programming. 

In making the work, I am reflecting on what is deemed ethnically alien, both fetishized and demonized, and bringing psychosocial registers that are absent from their initial representations into existence.

A Feeling Like Chaos is a multi-channel video installation attempting to make sense of a continuum of disaster, disease, fear, and political systems that sanction violence towards its citizens. The characters in the work take on roles such as conjurer, guerilla, or wandering sage. I am invested in tangible interactions between people and how one maintains intimacy during turbulent social climates.  

Click here to view photos of the artworks

Read the Los Angeles Times review of 'To Sleep With Terra' by Christopher Knight

An artist talk with Tisa Bryant and Suné Woods