SARAH TRIGG: DAILY MARKINGS ON THE FACE OF THE EARTH

Cultural Politics
Vol.5, Number 2, July 2009

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SARAH TRIGG WAS BORN IN 1973 IN APPLETON, WISCONSIN. HER WORK HAS BEEN EXHIBITED IN NEW YORK AND ACROSS THE US, INCLUDING AT THE NEUBERGER MUSEUM OF ART (PURCHASE, NY), THE BRONX MUSEUM OF THE ARTS (NY), AND THE WEATHERSPOON ART MUSEUM (GREENSBORO, NORTH CAROLINA). SHE LIVES AND WORKS IN BROOKLYN, NY.

More info: http://sarahtrigg.com

 

> DAILY MARKINGS ON THE FACE OF THE EARTH

The original spark for my most recent series of paintings was a piece I made back in 2003 titled Three Views of the Cuban Missile Crisis. It was a semiabstract triptych based on three satellite photographs of the Cuban Missile Crisis. This painting signaled a shift away from my previous work, the moment in which I began to track politically influenced, man-made marks etched on the surface of the earth.

At the time, I was reading Manuel De Landa’s A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History (1997), which compares the development of history to a dynamic living tissue in a constant state of destruction and renewal. Organ-like agencies and circulatory-like systems, according to De Landa, develop and deteriorate in line with geopolitical shifts in power. While examining the satellite images of the Cuban Missile Crisis, it struck me that marks left by trucks and buses as they drove back and forth between bunkers might be read aesthetically, like a drawing, while at the same time they seemed to provide a diagnostic tool for interpreting the gravity of the world’s political situations.