MINE SIGN

As I went walking I saw a sign there
And on the sign it said "No Trespassing."  
But on the other side it didn't say nothing,
That side was made for you and me.
–Woody Guthrie, This Land Is Your Land

In this series, Kim Beck created a gold-mirrored sign that she took across the country on a road trip. Recalling Woody Guthrie’s This Land is Your Land and Walt Whitman's Song of Myself, the series of photographs, along with the physical sign, questions the prospect of claiming any land (“mine”) but also played with the various puns involved in the word “mine,” which also might refer to a land mine, gold mine, coal mine, or even the kind of ownership implied when claiming land. To whom does this land belong? Who owned it before the current owner, and before that? Tracing the history of “mine” takes us to a historical perspective on land rights. The act of placing it in Las Vegas, farmlands, and store parking lots points to this, as does the act of planting the sign in Yosemite National Park to Niagara Falls. Is this a gesture of reclamation, a call for a collective self? Rendered in the Trump Tower typeface, the font and the hashtag signal the absurd relationship between social media and real space where a physical hashtag doesn’t register.