Twisted by wind and time, the Joshua tree stands as a silent oracle of the desert — once part of a living sacred world, long before settlers renamed it after a conqueror. In that act of naming, a deeper violence took root: the remaking of an ancient land into a projection of destiny and ownership.
California was imagined as a promised land, a mirage shimmering at the edge of the American Dream. But the desert remembers. The Joshua tree, unadapted to the frequency of wildfire’s new fury, burns and fails, leaving blackened monuments in its place — witnesses to the collapse not just of ecosystems, but of illusions.
In these works, a flood of deep blue — the spiritual color of mourning, mystery, and of thresholds between worlds — veils the scorched landscape. Blue alludes to what fire cannot destroy: the endurance of memory and the sacredness that survives even in ruin.