Kim Stringfellow
THE MOJAVE PROJECT
FEBRUARY 25 - JULY 23, 2022
MARJORIE BARRICK MUSEUM OF ART
UNIVERSITY OF NEVADA LAS VEGAS
Support for The Mojave Project is provided by California Humanities, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, San Diego State University, and a gift from Ed Ruscha. Additional project support was provided through a Guggenheim Fellowship awarded to Kim Stringfellow in 2015. The Mojave Project is a project of the Fulcrum Arts EMERGE Program. Project partners include KCET Artbound, UNLV’s Marjorie Barrick Museum of Art, Nevada Museum of Art, LACE (Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions), MOAH (Museum of Art & History) and The Mojave Desert Heritage & Cultural Association.
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Copyright © 2024 Marjorie Barrick Museum of Art
Marjorie Barrick Museum of Art University of Nevada, Las Vegas Box 4012
4505 S. Maryland Pkwy. Las Vegas, NV 89154
Artworks by © 2022 by Kim Stringfellow
Catalog designed by Alex J. Panzer
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The Mojave Project is a transmedia documentary and curatorial project led by Kim Stringfellow exploring the physical, geological and cultural landscape of the Mojave Desert. The Mojave Project reconsiders and establishes multiple ways in which to interpret this unique and complex landscape through association and connection of seemingly unrelated sites, themes and subjects, thus creating a speculative and immersive experience for our audience.
The Mojave Project materializes over time through deep research and direct field inquiry through interviews, reportage and personal journaling supported with still photography, audio and video documentation. Field Dispatches are shared throughout the production period at mojaveproject.org and through our publishing partner, KCET Artbound. Installments include those of notable guest contributors, including Michael Andrews, Jeffrey Burbank, Chris Clarke, Edwin Corle, Jenny Kane, Phillip Klasky, Marli Miller, Julia Sizek and Aurora Tang. A program of public field trip experiences and satellite events explores the diverse communities and sites of the Mojave Desert.
The initial phase of the project is designed to make ongoing research transparent, inviting the audience into the conversation as the project develops. Ultimately, The Mojave Project aims to create a comprehensive transmedia repository of knowledge relating to the contemporary Mojave Desert. The 2022 Marjorie Barrick Museum of Art exhibition features photographs and field dispatches created during the past six years.
photographic
Installation view
MOJAVE, Kim Stringfellow (2017)
Aluminum, plexiglass, plywood, gold leaf,
images, LEDs, spent shotgun shells, miner’s trash collected from Beatty, Nevada.
PROJECT THEMES
DESERT AS WASTELAND
How has our valuation of the Mojave Desert changed over time? What outside forces and historic precedents, including federal and state land management policies, are responsible for the varied attitudes toward this desert? How do the Indigenous people of the Mojave consider this landscape historically and into the future?
GEOLOGICAL TIME VS. HUMAN TIME
In no other landscape are humans more directly confronted with the magnitude of geological time than in deserts. How does one perceive the passage of time and respond to our mortality while encountering the sublimity of the Mojave Desert? What geological events have determined the evolution of this region’s biota within this unique and spectacular landscape?
SACRIFICE AND EXPLOITATION
Nineteenth-century explorers realized early on the region’s potential for lucrative mineral extraction. Numerous waves of exploitation and mismanagement of the Mojave’s abundant resources can now be readily viewed upon the land. What are the consequences of these past and future activities on this landscape and its ecology?
DESERT AS STAGING GROUND
Sited within the Mojave Desert are five major U.S. military installations and several commercial aerospace research facilities. The remoteness and physicality of this desert region has positioned it as the ideal site for technological aerospace innovation, military training and weapon experimentation. How has this region’s military presence transformed the Mojave’s landscape and how has its culture shaped its civilian inhabitants?
SPACE AND PERCEPTION
The sheer physical vastness and suggested “emptiness” of the Mojave Desert has attracted artists for staging various actions and interventions while, in turn, inviting inquiries into human cognition and the sensory processes that determine how we perceive and make sense of our physicality within this arid environment?
DANGER AND CONSEQUENCE
Early explorers and westward settlers crossing the Mojave encountered a forbidding and hostile place that is the lore of legend. Modern technologies now make travel through this extreme environment seemingly effortless, but mishaps and even death can result for those unprepared. Illicit and nefarious activities ensue outside of the eyes of the law within the more remote expanses of this region.
MOVEMENT AND MOBILITY
Nineteenth-century explorers realized early on the region’s potential for lucrative mineral extraction. Numerous waves of exploitation and mismanagement of the Mojave’s abundant resources can now be readily viewed upon the land. What are the consequences of these past and future activities on this landscape and its ecology?
TRANSFORMATION AND REINVENTION
Deserts have long been sought as places for contemplation, meditation and renewal. Past and present utopic communities formed within the Mojave foster a communal life independent from the restraints of mainstream society. Who were these past interlopers and characters? How are the current denizens and communities of this arid region evolving and reinventing themselves today?
Above
Detail of Estes “Prospector” model rocket.
Detail of Stories
Detail of desert rose (selenite) mineral specimen.
Left Popular Mechanics Magazine September 1958.
Right
The Effects of Atomic Weapons Samuel Glasstone (editor), originally published in 1950 by the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory with Nevada Test Site patch.
DeBaca 2.2-kiloton balloon burst, fired on October 26, 1958, part of the Operation Hardtrack II nuclear test series conducted at the NTS. Courtesy of UNLV Special Collections.
2019
This photograph of Matthew Leivas Sr., a Chemehuevi elder, Salt Song singer and environmental activist, was taken during
in the Old Woman Mountains Preserve southwest of Needles, California.
Above Geologist’s pick. Petrified wood specimen.
Left
Detail of Map of the Wonderland from A Climber’s Guide to Joshua Tree National Monument by John Wolfe and Bob Dominick, 1979, with Joshua Tree patch.
Right
Detail of “Greetings from the Mojave Desert” vintage accordion postcard, circa 1960s.
Above
Detail of “Saucer Session for Spaceship Sighters” spread in LIFE Magazine, May 27, 1957.
Detaill of Council of the Seven Lights by George W. Van Tassel, 1958, with rose quartz mineral specimen.
Right
Chrysocolla mineral specimen.
Two borate mineral specimens collected from the Rio Tinto Boron Mine’s visitor center in Boron, CA.
Left
Desert Reckoning: A Town Sheriff, a Mojave Hermit, and the Biggest Manhunt in Modern California History by Deanne Stillman, 2012.
Installation view - The Mojave Project Reader
THE 2022 MOJAVE PROJECT WEBINAR SERIES
The Mojave Desert is undergoing profound physical transformation due to human activity. The Mojave Project illuminates how human activities affect wildlife habitat, ecosystems, and our quality of life throughout this arid bioregion. Understanding what is at stake is crucial to transition to a sustainable future for all living organisms. To do so, we must delve into the history of regional land use, including that of the Mojave’s Indigenous Peoples and others previously underrepresented.
Our four scheduled webinars coinciding with The Mojave Project exhibition at the Marjorie Barrick Museum of Art at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV), brought together a variety of voices and perspectives, including Indigenous culture bearers, scholars, researchers, artists and activists from the Mojave Desert bioregion spanning California, Nevada, Arizona and Utah.
The Legacy of the Nevada Test Site
April 7, 2022
Big Desert Solar & Wind—But at What Cost?
May 19, 2022
Indigenous Perspectives of the Mojave Desert June 23, 2022
African American Homesteading in Lanfair Valley July 21, 2022
MOJAVE (detail), Kim Stringfellow (2017)
Installation view
MARJORIE BARRICK MUSEUM OF ART
The Marjorie Barrick Museum of Art believes everyone deserves access to art that challenges our understanding of the present and inspires us to create a future that holds space for us all.
Located on the campus of one of the most racially diverse universities in the United States, we strive to create a nourishing environment for those who continue to be neglected by contemporary art museums, including BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ groups. As the only art museum in the city of Las Vegas, we commit ourselves to leveling barriers that limit access to the arts, especially for first-time visitors. To facilitate access for low-income guests we provide free entry to all our exhibitions, workshops, lectures, and community activities. Our collection of artworks offers an opportunity for researchers and scholars to develop a more extensive knowledge of contemporary art in Southern Nevada. The Barrick Museum is part of the College of Fine Arts at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV).
Alisha Kerlin
Chloe J. Bernardo
Paige Bockman
LeiAnn Huddleston
Emmanuel Muñoz
D.K. Sole
Marjorie Barrick Museum of Art University of Nevada, Las Vegas Box 4012 4505 S. Maryland Pkwy. Las Vegas, NV 89154
702-895-3381 www.unlv.edu/barrickmuseum
PHOTOGRAPHY CREDITS
Images by Mikayla Whitmore and Josh Hawkins/UNLV Creative Services, courtesy of the artists.
Mikayla Whitmore Pages 3–4, 7–21, 22 (bottom), 24 (bottom), and back cover.
Josh Hawkins Pages 22 (top) and 24 (top). Front cover Kim Stringfellow. Courtesy of the artist.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The Mojave Project was produced with the help of the Marjorie Barrick Museum of Art staff: Alisha Kerlin, Chloe Bernardo, Paige Bockman, Tracy Fuentes, Lauren Dominguez, LeiAnn Huddleston, Emmanuel Muñoz, and D.K. Sole, Further assistance was provided by the Museum’s volunteers and interns: Emily Espanol, Michael Freborg, Charlene Gassett, Maricela Lopez, Andrea Noonoo, Naes Pierott, Mariela Rivera, and Diane Lozano Tovar.
Support for The Mojave Project was provided by California Humanities, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, San Diego State University, and a gift from Ed Ruscha. Additional project support was provided through a Guggenheim Fellowship awarded to Kim Stringfellow in 2015. The Mojave Project is a project of the Fulcrum Arts EMERGE Program. Project partners include KCET Artbound, UNLV’s Marjorie Barrick Museum of Art, Nevada Museum of Art, LACE (Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions), MOAH (Museum of Art & History) and The Mojave Desert Heritage & Cultural Association.
