Points Known and Unknown
2024 - Ongoing
When we think of the characteristics of a place, we tend to focus on the physical, but there is a less tangible dimension, having to do with a history of a place and its inherent memory. The desert is such a place, where at first glance, nature appears untouched and inert in a way that suggests time stood still here and what can be seen, has been there for a very long time. In a geological sense, this may be true, but in terms of human time, even a place such as this has an active past for cultures calling it home. Traces of past habitation are not readily evident, but when they reveal themselves, it becomes a remarkable inversion of the “meaning” of a place to see it one way—as pristine and pure nature—and in an instant see it another way—as having had a rich former life of human habitation.
Points Known and Unknown is a visual survey of the Arabian Desert natural landscape and its intersections with modern culture, while extending its vision back by bringing attention to these moments where the desert quietly speaks back about its human past, and variously, informs the present. The series takes its title from a process used to survey the land that can be summed up as “the science of making precise measurements between known and unknown points to determine accurate positional locations.” In a similar manner, Points Known and Unknown uses its known points (the landscapes as seen today) and its unknown points (the traces of their memory) to more accurately arrive at a meaning of a place that is richly grounded yet eternally mysterious.