Landscape Incarceration

Label

Shannon Ebner’s photographic work explores language, its ambiguities, and its limits. Part of Ebner’s series Dead Democracy Letters (2002–6), Landscape Incarceration is set in a deserted location near Los Angeles. In black and white, the title phrase sits ominously on the horizon—like a dark foil to the Hollywood sign. This series responds to the drastic shift in the American political landscape after the 9/11 terrorist attacks and serves as a broader critique of freedom of speech, democracy, and war. In Ebner’s work, the physical landscape becomes a potent symbolic site of protest. While the West, in the American imaginary, was once associated with infinite expansion and possibilities, the notion of incarceration in this work implies the physical and conceptual limitations of the landscapes in which we find ourselves.

From the 2019 exhibition New Landscapes: Contemporary Responses to Globalization, curated by Jessica Hong, Associate Curator of Global Contemporary Art

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Shannon Ebner’s photographic work explores language, its ambiguities, and its limits. Part of Ebner’s series Dead Democracy Letters (2002–6), Landscape Incarceration is set in a deserted location near Los Angeles. In black and white, the title phrase sits ominously on the horizon—like a dark foil to the Hollywood sign. While the West, in the American imaginary, was once associated with infinite expansion and possibilities, the notion of incarceration in this work implies the physical and conceptual limitations of the landscapes in which we find ourselves.

From the 2022 exhibition This Land: American Engagement with the Natural World, curated by Jami C. Powell, Curator of Indigenous Art; Barbara J. MacAdam, former Jonathan L. Cohen Curator of American Art; Thomas H. Price, former Curatorial Assistant; Morgan E. Freeman, former DAMLI Native American Art Fellow; and Michael Hartman, Jonathan Little Cohen Associate Curator of American Art

Course History

ANTH 7.05, Animals and Humans, Laura Ogden, Winter 2022

GEOG 31.01, Postcolonial Geographies, Erin Collins, Winter 2022

ANTH 50.05, Environmental Archaeology, Madeleine McLeester, Winter 2022

ANTH 50.05, Environmental Archaeology, Madeleine McLeester, Winter 2022

ARTH 5.01, Introduction to Contemporary Art, Mary Coffey and Chad Elias, Winter 2022

ANTH 3.01, Introduction to Cultural Anthropology, Chelsey Kivland, Summer 2022

ANTH 3.01, Introduction to Cultural Anthropology, Chelsey Kivland, Summer 2022

SPAN 65.15, Wonderstruck: Archives and the Production of Knowledge in an Unequal World, Silvia Spitta and Barbara Goebel, Summer 2022

Exhibition History

"Shannon Ebner: Dead Democracy Letters", Wallspace, New York, February 19 - March 26, 2005

Ecstatic Alphabets, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, May 6 - August 27, 2012

New Landscapes: Contemporary Responses to Globalization, Class of 1967 Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, June 15-August 18, 2019.

This Land: American Engagement with the Natural World, Owen Robertson Cheatham Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth, Hanover, New Hampshire, April 20- July 24, 2022.

Published References

Roberta Smith, "Shannon Ebner: Dead Democracy Letters", The New York Times, March 25, 2005. Peter Eleey, "Shannon Ebner". Frieze, June/July/August 2005. Rebecca Cascade, "Character Building", Elle, November 2005.

Provenance

Wallspace, New York, New York, date unknown; Anonymous gift; given to present collection, 2018.

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Subjects