Bateau Freedoms

Bateau Freedoms maps the geographies and power relations of the shallows in a landscape that has been deeply dammed and colonized. The pieces of bark that are lightly colored in bright red represent the flat bottom networks of freedom, where the boats are portrayed as significant geographic elements while also reading as apart of the landscape. Through this framing we can understand flat bottom boats, their material, and designs as a language of landscape.

The flat bottom boats of New Orleans are known as Beteau, a shallow-draft, flat-bottomed boat. Unlike large colonial ships which were built to transport extracted resources and enslaved peoples, flat bottom boats were used to access the shallows of rivers, marsh, wetland, and swamp. Their flat bottoms assisted maroons find refuge from the inhumane conditions of slavery. Bateaux became apart of a larger flat bottom boat network on the Mississippi River and the lower Delta, neighboring Houma Nation. This heavily textured piece portrays the lower Mississippi Delta with acrylics and soil that blurs the ending and beginning of land, swamp, and water.

Piece completed under the supervision of Anna Brand

Medium
Acrylic, Gesso, dirt, bark, and vellum on canvas

Year
2026

Blueprint of Loss

Blueprint of Loss explores the relationship between Dams on the Saskatchewan River and social services creating a critical cartography that is rooted in a place based historical analysis. The ink depicts the structural, engineered, and designed elements such as dam blueprints, surveys, typically seen as progress contrasts with the lighter feathered charcoal, portraying histories of loss.

Piece completed under the supervision of Stephanie Syjuco

Medium
Charcoal and Ink on vellum

Year
2025

Trespasses

Trespasses explores the relationship between Dams on the Saskatchewan River and social services creating a critical cartography that is rooted in a place based historical analysis.

Archival surveys and historic studies of the River for Dam development are placed over the location of the river a long with repetitive words that were found in the archive to describe Canada as "Civility, Civility, Civility”. This evokes the painful history of settler-colonialism under the guise of “helping” and “Improving”, landscapes and Indigenous people experience ecocide at the hands of agricultural development and social services.

Piece completed under the supervision of Stephanie Syjuco

Medium
News paper, archive printed on vellum, collaged on laser printed map.

Year
2025

Deltaic Afterlives

Significant portions of New Orleans are aqueous spaces that continue to be traversed on flat bottom boats. In this piece I highlight the region of the lower Mississippi Delta that is wetland or swamp using archival images of canoes, skiffs, and pirogues. At the backdrop of this aqueous landscape is the document detailing the 1928 flood control act written by congress. The memory shown as embedded in these landscapes juxtapose the flood control act which emphasizes technical factors in the drainage project.

Piece completed under the supervision of Anna Brand

Medium
Historic images of tug boats, bateau boats, canoes, skiffs, and image of 1928 Flood Control Act to drain and levee New Orleans

Year
2025