Southern Oceans, Sardis, MS, 2019

Brooke White

Archival digital print

Framed: H. 21¾; W. 21¾"
Unframed: H. 16½; W. 16½"

Artist's Statement

As an artist, I have made work about the landscape for the past twenty years. I see it as a space that reflects much of what is taking place within the world, both on a macro and micro level. The conceptual framework of my projects is consistently driven by the politics of place, memory, and time, and the role they play in establishing landscapes. When making images, I constantly consider landscape's role in how the natural environment functions in the theatre of global life. In my focus on the land, the environment is always the central figure where events unfold and histories are established. My work is created primarily using photography and ranges from experimental abstraction, documentary, portraiture, and includes video. Each of these visual strategies serves a particular purpose and answers specific questions I have related to the landscape and our relationship to it.

Southern Oceans documents man-made reservoirs throughout the American South and re-imagines them as oceans. With this project, I am interested in photography's potential to defamiliarize the harnessed water of enormous public-works projects, transforming them into newly imagined landscapes.

As a child, I grew up on the ocean and spent much of my time staring at the horizon, wondering what was past that thin line in the distance. The ocean has always served a critical role in my work and it is a place that I return to often. As an adult, I have found myself many hours away from any ocean, but when the light is just right these man-made reservoirs remind me of oceans from home. Ultimately, this project aims to create a sense of expansiveness in the landscape that is meant to defamiliarize these enormous public-works projects to create new oceans of the South.

About the Artist

Brooke White is both a practicing artist and educator specializing in art photography and video art, with an M.F.A. from Cornell University and a B.F.A from Alfred University, New York State College of Ceramics. White has exhibited her photographs and videos nationally and internationally including the Hammer Museum, Mississippi Museum of Art and the Ogden Museum of Southern Art. She was a Senior Fulbright Scholar in India and is a recipient of numerous Mississippi Arts Council Individual artist grants. Her work has been published in Aint Bad Magazine and the Oxford American and is part of the Do Good Fund's collection.

White is represented by Galerie MB in Paris, France.

White resides in Oxford, MS where she is Professor of Art in the Department of Art &

Art History at the University of Mississippi.

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