Cynthia Hooper
Art Statement: My videos, paintings, and interdisciplinary projects investigate landscapes transfigured by social and environmental contingency. My work is meditative and poetic, but also takes a generously observational and generally factual approach toward the places I examine. I’ve worked with Tijuana’s complex urban environment and infrastructure, as well as contested and politicized water issues along the U.S./Mexico border. I’ve also made a variety of videos about water and land use issues in California and Ohio, including projects about the Klamath and the Cuyahoga rivers. In my work, the perceptual and the political interests me in equal measure. My investigations are disciplined, graceful, and temperately activist.
Description of included work: Westlands is a two-channel video installation that is 6.5 minutes in duration. The Westlands water district in California's San Joaquin Valley is undisputedly the largest and most powerful in the nation. This agricultural district's outsized and highly mechanized operations grow billions of pounds of tomatoes, almonds, pistachios, wheat and cotton for the global market each year. Because of the vast quantities of water needed to grow these crops, Westlands has long exerted an outsized influence on the politics and the shifting environmental dynamics of the Sacramento/San Joaquin Bay Delta to its north. Despite the longstanding environmental problems associated with Westlands’ vast and complex irrigation regimen, the sweeping panoramas that define this site as a phenomenological experience often complicate predictable assumptions about it. The subtle and grandiose visual metaphors found here possess undeniable political agency, but also a capacious poetry as well.
Description of included work: Westlands is a two-channel video installation that is 6.5 minutes in duration. The Westlands water district in California's San Joaquin Valley is undisputedly the largest and most powerful in the nation. This agricultural district's outsized and highly mechanized operations grow billions of pounds of tomatoes, almonds, pistachios, wheat and cotton for the global market each year. Because of the vast quantities of water needed to grow these crops, Westlands has long exerted an outsized influence on the politics and the shifting environmental dynamics of the Sacramento/San Joaquin Bay Delta to its north. Despite the longstanding environmental problems associated with Westlands’ vast and complex irrigation regimen, the sweeping panoramas that define this site as a phenomenological experience often complicate predictable assumptions about it. The subtle and grandiose visual metaphors found here possess undeniable political agency, but also a capacious poetry as well.
Cynthia Hooper's recent exhibits include the Center for Land Use Interpretation in Los Angeles, the Museum of Modern Art in Mexico City, The Centro Cultural Tijuana, Intersection for the Arts in San Francisco, and MASS MoCA. Cynthia has also been awarded residencies at the Headlands Center for the Arts and the Djerassi Resident Artists Program, as well as a Gunk Foundation grant.
