Strangle/Sing by Michelle Hagewood

Michelle Hagewood

Strangle/Sing

acrylic ink, graphite on Dura-lar, steel pins, stainless steel wire

72 x 40 x 3 in

This work is part of a larger series titled “never/ever”, which explores a world of psychologically-informed landscapes and waterscapes that express intersections of death, change and wonder.

I was first introduced to strangling trees when I visited The Children’s Eternal Rainforest in Costa Rica in 2007. Since that experience, my awe has only intensified for how trees reach for one another, engulf each other, connect with one another, and work as a community to survive and thrive. Their ability to strangle is particularly captivating to me on a visceral and visual level. It struck something deep inside of me that I’m still working to understand. The roots and arms of the strangler fig can be invasive, colonizing, adaptive, and protective. When I returned to the urban landscape after this visit, I saw human-made roots and branches everywhere. They were in the form of sewer and water pipes being laid into a gouged earth, electric and phone lines interrupting every view I had of the sky, and debris that snaked its way throughout the architecture and concrete expanse. I began dissecting these infrastructural systems and examining my own relationship to them.

This piece comes from that lineage of work, and it has become a central fixture in the growing never/ever world I’ve been mapping. It exists among land and water forms that bear the impact of human ingenuity, violence, destruction, and creativity. It is a place where two systems of connection and consumption meet and enter into a negotiation.

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From Michelle Hagewood

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Additional Details

Additional Artworks

Leak

Hybrid/Mother

Mineral memory

sink and sway

Entwined

Compost

Remember/ forest

Reef