Annually, the freeze-thaw cycles on the site of Groundwork push boulders and stone to the surface of the earth: animist refusals of the Enclosures that partition our lives. Groundwork moves in concert with these shifts and rotations; suspended between the material histories embedded in the ground and the immaterial practices inherited by generations of Indigenous stewards. The rituals of tending to the ground make this place home.
The installation is composed of two intersecting forms. A slightly irregular square is composed of tightly packed local stone, the same stone used by the Stockbridge‐Munsee Community Band of Mohicans to shape cairns and walls into local ceremonial markers and waypoints. The second form is a shadow, inscribed by a dark patch of flowers and grasses. Over the course of a year, the planting transforms from dormant and invisible to vibrant and immersive.
AD—WO is an art and architecture practice based in New York City, and by extension, between Melbourne and Addis Ababa. The practice examines how space is imaged and valued through art, design, and curatorial interventions. Founded in 2015 by Jen Wood and Emanuel Admassu, AD—WO has undertaken projects in Ethiopia, Tanzania, Germany, Italy, and the United States. Their work has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York (2021), Architekturmuseum der TU München (2018), and Studio Museum in Harlem (2017). AD—WO’s work is in the permanent collections of the Art Institute of Chicago and the High Museum of Art (Atlanta).
Jon Lott / Para Project: Bivouac for Models
Bivouac for Models is a pairing of model-scale and full-scale architectures. Taking its title from the “bivouac”—the French term for a makeshift structure made of branches, leaves, and ferns often fashioned by soldiers taking shelter from the elements overnight during prolonged battles—the building acts as a shelter for a small-scale model of a similar Jon Lott / Para Project design. Tucked into a wooded section of Art Omi’s grounds, the building’s placement mirrors the bivouac, a temporary structure just over the tree line from a cleared section of forest.
This intentional pairing of architectures of different sizes in Bivouac for Models highlights the scalar shifts which occur between different stages of the design process. By housing a model of an as-yet unrealized building, Bivouac for Models acts as a space where new modes of discourse and object making are sheltered from the corrosive forces of time and history to which they would otherwise be lost.