I am sharing another short clip from my experimental video Viking Lander, currently on view at @sevildolmacidubai through July 15. In this scene, I move a lens across the surface of a screen, exploring a still image of the Martian ground taken in the 1970s. If you look closely, you’ll see trough-like marks left in the soil by the lander itself (see second image with arrow). I’m drawn to these moments when the lander “sees” itself or a mark it has made—a self-reflexive proof of existence. Today, we’re used to rovers that traverse Mars documenting different geological features. In contrast, the Viking Landers were completely stationary, scanning the terrain from a fixed position. From 1976–1982, over 4,000 images were captured from their two vantage points, documenting the same rocks and pebbles again and again. Last image: A mosaic of three Orbiter photos showing the area around the Viking Lander 2 site. The location is marked with a bar. Journal of Geophysical Research, Vol. 82, No. 28, September 30, 1977. — Viking Lander (running time 15:31) is a moving image work that reimagines the making of the first on-the-ground images on Mars in the 1970s. From Fragments to Coherence is on view through July 15 (extended). Grateful to @ipekulusoyakgul and @sevildolmacigallery for including this piece. #planetaryimaging #experimentalvideo #vikinglander #morethanhuman #marsgeology #ontheground #sevildolmaciartgallery

This silver gelatin print titled Drawing is part of Archive 192, currently on view at @umbcspecialcollections library in Baltimore. I’m sharing here some related process images from my studio around the time this piece was made. Black carbon paper sculptures formed the subject. Thanks to @louiepalu and @chloecolemanmedia for assembling this incredible collection. —— In conjunction with the exhibition Archive 192: Abstract Photographs by Women, on display at the Albin O. Kuhn Library Gallery through May 31, the Library Gallery presents an Exhibition Tour and Artist Conversation: Saturday May 3 2:00 p.m. — Exhibition tour with Louie Palu 2:30 p.m. — Artists Julianna Foster and Claire A. Warden in conversation, moderated by Chloe Coleman 3:30 p.m. — Reception Admission is free. The presentation of this exhibition is supported by an arts program grant from the Maryland State Arts Council, an agency funded by the State of Maryland and the National Endowment for the Arts. Additional support comes from the Baltimore County Commission on the Arts & Sciences, the Libby Kuhn Endowment Fund, as well as individual contributors. #archive192

My video Viking Lander, currently on view @sevildolmacidubai is an experimental moving image work that reimagines the making of the first images on Mars in the 1970s. This scene focuses on the Lander’s color calibration system. It circles the question of how to render color. This question which gets at the nature of perspective and vision, has puzzled the Viking Lander team and subsequent missions as Martian ambient light has a different spectrum. Meanwhile our only comparison is an Earthly one. This video is inspired by the intermingling of analog and digital markers used by the Viking Landers including facsimile, radio, and magnetic tape. A still from this scene is printed on seven silk panels and is also on view with the video. I’ll share some more scenes over the course of the exhibition From Fragments to Coherence, on view through May 10th. Many thanks to @ipekulusoyakgul and @sevildolmacigallery for including this work. #vikinglander #colortheory #morethanhuman #planetaryimaging #experimentalvideo #sevildolmaciartgallery

✨From Fragments to Coherence opens tomorrow in Dubai @sevildolmacigallery I wish I could be there, but I’m very happy to see this work share the space in such great company, thoughtfully curated by @ipekulusoyakgul and beautifully installed by the gallery team. ✨ —— Moving Image Panorama Video still printed on silk organza ———- Sevil Dolmaci Dubai is delighted to present From Fragments to coherence, a compelling group exhibition curated by Ipek Ulusoy Akgül. Featuring works by Cristiana de Marchi, Deniz Ozuygur, Ebru Dösekçi, Hala Schoukair, Hangama Amiri, Hiba Kalache, Kiymet Dastan, Nevin Aladag, Onur Hastürk, Sabine Boehl, Sara Al Haddad, Sage Lewis, and Sinem Sezgin Bozkurt, the exhibition will be on view from April 8 to May 10. From Fragments to Coherence examines the part-whole relationship in artistic practices, exploring how exhibiting artists intricately engage with fragments-whether material, conceptual, or geographical-to forge new understandings of coherence, integration, and transformation. Spanning various media, from sculpture and textiles to painting and installation, the exhibition highlights the interplay between materiality, memory, and meaning-making. The participating artists address themes of destruction and reconstruction as a process of both personal and collective synthesis. #sevildolmacigallery #dubaidesigndistrict #materialimage #videostill #experimentalphotography #phototextiles

Today is the final day to see Assembly: 2025 Maine College of Art & Design Alumni Triennial! The ICA is open until 5:00pm!! ⏱️ This hybrid textile-image work titled Quadrant is assembled from four panels of painted raw linen printed with inkjet, mounted on muslin and aluminum. The image comes from a sunrise encounter in a place where the oceanic crust has come up from below, exposing forms shaped by steam, gases, and compressed bodies of ancient sea-creatures. The conveyor-belt of eons cycling through the visible realm. About the exhibition, Kiko Aebi, Katz Curator at the Colby College Museum of Art, wrote “Across a wide range of mediums- including painting, drawing, photography, textile, ceramics, sculpture, artist’s books, and documentary reportage-these artists recompose materials and ideas drawn from disparate contexts to unsettle aspects of our daily lives and the places we inhabit that often go overlooked and unscrutinized.” Thanks to Kiko Aebi and to everyone that has made it out to see the show!! 🌠

Here’s the backstory for two of my works on view @icaatmeca through April 6th, told as a tale of two volcanoes- and Mars. The Furnas and Poas Volcanos are two locations spliced together in this diptych of works on paper featured in the Assembly exhibition. I visited Furnas, Azores (Portugal) in 2022, and spent time exploring and filming the steam vents and boiling waters. The last eruption here was in 1630 but the Azores island chain sits at a seismic triple junction of three tectonic plates. The basaltic composition here is roughly similar to the Martian crust. The fumarolic fields are studied as an analog in early Martian environments where microbial life may have existed. I became entranced filming the boiling earth for a video project. At several points, the steam completely obscures the lens. In 2023, I traveled to the Poas Volcano in Costa Rica. Poas sits at 8,900 ft. elevation, surrounded by a cloud forest. Why come here? The discovery in 2013 of Acidiphilum bacteria that can survive in the boiling acid crater makes it a unique Mars analog site. Poas is an active volcano with a warning system that detects changes in gases emitted. Volcanic explosions in 2017 and 2019 sent rocks flying over a mile. What I found most amazing at Poas is the strata showing about 1,000 years of eruptions revealed in a few meters of the hillside. Folding is a common way that sediments meld into metamorphic rock. These assemblages are cut according to a folding instructional pattern and each edge, having been cut while overlapping together, fits perfectly edge-to-edge, creating the appearance of a seamless surface. “We would like to characterize how life reclaims this environment. A main hypothesis from our study is that life in the Poás Volcano is able to survive on the fringes during these extreme environments. -Geoffroy Avard, volcanologist at the Volcanological and Seismological Observatory of Costa Rica (OVSICORI) The exhibition, titled Assembly, is curated by Kiko Aebi, and installed at the ICA at Maine College of Art & Design in Portland, Maine, through April 6th. Thank you for watching and following my research! #marsanalog #artandscience #planetarygeology

I’m excited to have works @icaatmeca in Assembly, the Alumni Triennial opening on February 7th! Please join us for the opening reception from 5:00-8:00pm. Curated by Kiko Aebi, Katz Curator at the Colby College Museum of Art, Assembly is on view from February 7 - April 6, 2025. I’ll be participating in the artist talks in the gallery on Saturday, Feb. 8th from 2-3pm. I hope to see you there. ✨

Tomorrow in Philadelphia, I will join my coworkers to celebrate our creative acts. We are arts workers making art in the wee hours while holding down full-time jobs in the industry. Come out and see! Condition Report is on view through July 26th at the Atelier Gallery in Brewerytown. This piece called Piedra Colorada is from a series of experimental prints on linen (17 x 22”) with paint washes and spray staining the raw linen, and tricking printers into doing their printer things over it multiple times to see what happens. This piece resulted from studying the oceanic crust-turned-volcanic coastline of Montezuma on the Nicoya Peninsula of Costa Rica last year. It exemplifies my ongoing interest in the processes of newly-generated earth, erosion, and what lies above and below a visible surface. This cove called Piedra Colorada contains many colorful examples of jasper in red, orange, yellow, and green and the color staining process with the linen is inspired by the tradition of hand-coloring glass negatives and the false color used to identify minerals in planetary imaging. This is young earth. In recent geologic time, North and South America were not connected. From Nicaragua north, the land is geologically part of North America while Costa Rica and Panama result from collisions of the Cocos, Nazca, and Caribbean plates. Very seismic.

There is a perceptual phenomenon in planetary imaging called relief reversal or terrain reversal- when the spatial cues of light and shadow are ambiguous and it can be difficult to tell if you are looking at a crater or a mountain for example. Without the context of stereo vision, the relief or depression can optically reverse. This one is doing for me as I look from different angles. Is it above or below? I love the idea of a squishy perceptual space that takes a seemingly banal and knowable surface (this one from Montezuma, Costa Rica) and makes it full of possibilities and surprises. Last image: the moon.

Eclipsing in the snow will never get old. Glasses by @upendthis dusted off from 2017, still going strong. Also baby lambs born on Eclipse day morning! The sheep came out around totality to see what was going on.

Above and Below

Magna

Mosaic

Parallax/Geography

Unraveling Mars

Pandemic Postcards

Earth Analogues

Piranesi's Fire

The Desert and Mars

Fixed/Fluxed

Temporary Surface

Cuts

Mirage installation

Laser print/drawings

Paper negatives

Paper architecture

Cut vaults

Cut diagrams

Let’s Connect.