The order of Mont Bleu
In The Order of Mont Bleu, performance and sculpture is focused on the mythos and symbology of mountains. I view the mountain as a complex allegorical space that embodies both sublimity and physical adversity, utilizing it to address desires and histories for conquering the unknown. I considered references and research of European colonial expeditions to chart and conquer the mountain and its summits, parodying and revealing the inability to fully know and the fictive illusion of knowing. The work considers longer histories of the mountain as symbol of ineffability and supernatural phenomenon, evidenced in Moses’ divining of the ten commandments at the top of Mt Sinai or the embodiment of eternal lovers in Popocatéptl and Iztaccíhautl. It is these contradictions that my images consider, placing contemporary perceptions of physical adversity, challenge, and victory with long-standing mythologies of ascendancy, and the sublime. In these ways I continue to address overarching questions to control and perceptions of what the body can control or conquer.