This place-based, ambient installation was exhibited on All Hallow’s Eve in a disused alleyway between buildings on the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA) campus while present as an artist in residence. Built as a textile mill and becoming an electrical components factory before being abandoned and then rebuilt as an art center, these buildings rest on Mohican and Wabanaki / Dawnland Confederacy land.

The industrial history of the site, and the former blue-collar small town of North Adams, Massachusetts which hosts the MASS MoCA campus, is visible above ground through ever-present relict buildings and infrastructure. However, invisible legacies remain below ground, with 92 registered underground hazardous waste sites (as of 2020) beneath a town of only 12,000 people.

This installation uses a map-grid of the town of North Adams as the hanging structure for tumbling handmade fortune teller toys, which descend as an aerial spatial map of these underground sites. Shown on a day when the boundaries between worlds are imagined to be thinnest, and activated by the wind between the buildings and frequent passers-by, each mirrored, seemingly innocent object asks us to reflect on the ghosts that are present, if invisible, today, and what fortunes we will create for these lands in the future.

Artwork information: 84" x 42" x 42" (variable as installed). Mylar, wood, chain, thread. 2021.