Trails

Instagram | 2019-2020

Trails is a story of the American West. The story’s subject draws on comparisons between the frontiers’ deprived spaciousness and the familiar archetypes of western music and movie genres — the gambler, the duke, the cowboy, the man in black. These figures, commonly known as the hero and duetted with ladies and queens of the country, create heightened enthusiasm in the western landscape while also heralding an illusion of progress. They are trapped in a mania of their own making.

The hero is tied to the landscape and confined as the landscape is parceled out. The archetypes are still identifiable but stunted, unable to be seen at full view, and swept up by American nostalgia.