Hi, I’m Sarah McCormick. I am an interdisciplinary artist and social practitioner. I work predominantly with audio, found objects, electronic transmissions, and sculptural installation. My research considers the role of colonial agendas at play in the narrative of our global, ecological crisis. Through performative and sculptural gestures, I employ feminist and decolonial frameworks to conceptually dislodge objects such as land from extractivist boundaries.
This wooden topography has been produced from a digital rendering of existing open space land in Boulder County, Colorado. The work perceives land through the lens of extraction and construction even under the distinction of “open space” which tends to privilege aesthetically valuable land. These priorities frame land as a domesticated commodity, its perimeters defined by our needs whether the resource is industrial or visual. Plywood is an extremely processed composite of wood taken from the land and most often returned to the land as the sheathing of a building. As settlers, we tend to categorize land by its zone of function. It is for our shelter, our resource, or aesthetic pleasure. It exists defined by its fulfillment of our needs. It cannot simply be.