Commissioned for the first Candlewood Arts Festival in 2019, Holocene Screen returns to Borrego Springs for the first time since its debut.
Pearl C. Hsiung’s Holocene Screen was commissioned for the first Candlewood Arts Festival in 2019 and returns to Borrego Springs for the first time since its debut. The sculpture explores how we understand the terms “natural,” “artificial,” and “cultural” and how their definitions impact the way we move through the world. The structure of this sculpture, based on the honeycomb form of dried cholla and ocotillo branches, includes panels that incorporate unrecyclable plastic waste into colorfully rendered poems made in workshops with youth from the Borrego Springs Boys and Girls Club and visitors to the Borrego Art Institute. By sharing this work in the bustling commercial center of Borrego Springs, surrounded by the largest state park in California, it acts as a hopeful meditation on consumption, utility, waste, and our relationship to the environment and each other.
Thanks to Jim Wermers and Susan Percival at The Mall for providing the site for this installation. Thanks to the Borrego Springs Boys and Girls Club and the Borrego Art Institute for their partnership in producing this work.
