Terra Incognita

Collaborative sculpture and sound installation with Greg Stuart

2x4s, jeans, handbuilt speakers, six-channel audio 

Collage by Greg Stuart

Installation at 701 Center for Contemporary Art | Columbia, SC

In Terra Incognita, Naomi Falk and Greg Stuart present a landscape of 2x4s and textiles arranged throughout the gallery as a constellation of mountains, islands, or markers. Built with new, found, and reclaimed materials, every last scrap and thread was used. Topped throughout with handkerchiefs flagging potential distress or surrender, this bellwether landscape is set against a profoundly unsettling multi-channel audio collage emanating from within the sculptures. Composed of various sonic materials, including meditation tapes, sleep aid recordings, and environmental and electronic sounds, the slowly shifting soundscape creates underlying movement and undulation throughout the installation. With lulling tones and humorous undercurrents (if we don't laugh, we'll cry) these layered physical and aural juxtapositions belie a deep fundamental concern: How do we continue?

Terra Incognita places viewers inside a dynamic and curious environment fractured with subtle shifts, signs of life, and whispers of alarm, drifting toward an uncertain future. As such, the work reflects the spatially and temporally dispersed forces of the late-capitalist-driven climate catastrophe, simultaneously ever-present yet often beyond our everyday perceptions.