VISCOUS EMPIRE (2025)

Viscosity measures petroleum’s resistance to flow. Higher viscosity means greater resistance to flow, while lower viscosity indicates easier flow. A viscous empire is a swamp of imperial attitudes–both subservient and dominating–that sticks, the histories of resource excavation tied with nationalism, and my body in these spaces. Archival imagery, usage of decorative materials and photographic tropes of old Europe, excavation site detritus, and the inclusion of self, permit the visualization of degrees of viscosity.

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Ruin me, size vaires, 2025

2. Wolfcamp Catalogue (2020-ongoing)

The Permian Basin stretches across 86,000 square miles of desert in west Texas and eastern New Mexico. Far below this vast emptiness lies the site of my ongoing photographic project—the Wolfcamp Shale—the world’s most lucrative oil producing formation. With an anthropological eye, my project brings into focus the rise of the American nationalism, the colonial history of oil extraction, deal-makings, labor relations, post-colonial ripples, and the prehistoric geology of the carbon bearing Wolfcamp Shale. My square box frames, taking photographs every three miles across U.S. Interstate I-20, and the utilization of playwriting, are examples of the structuralist approach I use to reshape this unflinching universe, conspicuously imperial as it is vulnerably human.

3. Basin Recipe Cards (2020-ongoing)

The CaribBasin Recipe Cards bring together geographical regions, inquiry into the medium of photography, and a joy of cooking, all in a series of recipe cards. With these cards, I activate a space that finds Caribbean presence within the carbon bearing oil fields of the Permian Basin of Texas. The cards are designed as a boxed set of four-by-six-inch printed and archivable photographic cards.

© CARGO TEST 2027