Marisa J. Futernick
"Mirage", 2023
Single-channel HD video with sound, 24:19 min
Marjorie Barrick Museum of Art Collection
Courtesy of the artist
2023.07.001

In Mirage, Marisa J. Futernick considers the complex sociopolitical histories of the Nevada desert and the multitudes contained within these supposedly “empty” lands. The video uses the slideshow format, combining a voiceover narration with digital and analog photographs and slides shot on location by the artist.

Taking a poetic approach, Futernick’s narrative incorporates both fictional and factual elements, creating a more expansive form of storytelling. Mirage tries to figure out what makes up this place, from atomic testing to gaming, mining to the building of Hoover Dam. Construction, destruction, the economics of natural resources and land usage, the visualization of the current water crisis—what can be seen and what is hidden from view?

In the context of these bigger environmental explorations and exploitations, Futernick alludes to the historic Land Art works featured in Modern Desert Markings, responding to their inherent gendering—their grandiosity, expressions of power and imposition on the land—while also considering broader ideas of masculinity in the mythology of the American West.