Artist’s Statement
Basic Conditionalities or the Assumption of Burden: Stalking the Countryside is from the Wicked Aspirations: Parity or Bust series that critiques the conditions and consequences of current international economic policies. The series features a cast of characters involved in global economic relationships, particularly related to the genetic engineering of crops and their seeds. Genetic modification within agriculture and the attendant chemistry of fertilizers developed in the first world may have their benefits but are ultimately proprietary. The results are often corporate exploitation and engineered dependency of farmers around the globe. In Wicked Aspirations, various animal species struggle collectively toward the mirage of economic parity, the alleviation of odious debt, the eradication of suffering, a transition to prosperity and popular sovereignty—and to a restored and equitable balance of nature.
Humans perpetually try to domesticate nature, whether with bare hands or with advanced tools and technologies. Most people in the world still work by hand, largely sustaining themselves through agriculture. The “developed” world’s inventions to benefit mankind are often proprietary developments. In agriculture, they can ultimately lead to cash crops and export economies that drive farmers to suicide. In India, for example, nearly thirty people in the farming sector die by suicide each day. In On Earth Never Sown, we see manual tools working (or attacking?) a stone cloud, a human creation. The power of numbers and collective action convey an aspiration—perhaps the promise in Psalms that “the meek shall inherit the earth.”