Silent Sentinels
by Allen Morris
portfolio special mention call 'Urbanautica Institute Awards 2024', 2024
Category: Anthropology and Territories
Along the invisible line that divides North and South Dakota lies a string of quartzite monuments, obelisks engraved with symbols and glyphs seemingly indecipherable except to those who placed them in this vast landscape. These markers serve to separate land that was, not long ago, united under a singular name that is now divided in two. A former wilderness that still bears the name of indigenous inhabitants from whom the land was stripped, bifurcated, and sold off parcel by parcel.
This line of stone monuments to politics, separation, and territoriality is documented and explored in the body of work titled “Silent Sentinels,” a series of photographs, photogrammetric models, and 3-D printed sculptures. Removed from the context of the landscape that they divide, these reproduced markers become impotent reminders of the power that these borderlines have socially, politically, and economically not only between the two states named “Dakota,” but all the borderlines within and outside of the United States.
also from Urbanautica Institute Awards 2024