LAWN EXTRACTION

Kim Beck dug up and relocated a chunk of grass from her yard in Pittsburgh and relocated it to Long Island City for exhibition as a small gesture of land art, presenting this personal piece of turf as a stand-in for lawns in general—the pervasive floor of the American landscape, sanitized with fertilizers, genetically fortified and under constant threat of weedy invasion. The piece work carried additional resonance: a personal story of immigration and migration: Beck’s mother, the daughter of immigrants grew up in Long Island City; her daughter was returning soil from her home to the same neighborhood. A souvenir postcard of this backyard Land Art was free to visitors, as a photograph of the hole left behind in Pittsburgh. This piece of soil was later Installed at Flux Factory and later replanted at Socrates Sculpture Park.