Deathwork (American Chestnut) by Marina Zurkow

Deathwork (American Chestnut)2024

Digital print on Kozo Thick 110 gsm paper90 x 36 in / 228.6 x 91.4 cmEdition of 3, 1 AP

Marina Zurkow’s Deathwork series was originally motivated by the threat of AI inciting the fabled “death of the author.” In an investigation of this notion, the artist began composing unlikely formations that merged visual histories, morbidity, and landscape elements through sustained improvisations in collaboration with AI. Dall-e’s rich database of East Asian imagery mingled with Zurkow’s own experiences and influences as skies and horizons assembled into topographic scrolls. Works within this series originate through unimaginable associations of errors and victories. All three of the works feature lively substrate—in these works, soil—which, in many ways is unseeable and unknowable without technologies or imaginations. These "soil profiles” (portraits) are full of magic and also pollution, debris, and mutations. Deathwork (American Chestnut) is an homage to the American Chestnut (Castanea dentata): a fast growing tree and important food source now nearly extinct from a blight. The ghost of this majestic tree, once dominant in eastern North America, has a vivid underground life as well as other ghostly inhabitants.

Deathwork (American Chestnut) by Marina Zurkow, 2024