Susan Hiller

Journey to the Land of the Tarahumaras 2008



We live in a world of lost meanings. Journey to the Land of the Tarahumara explores my preoccupation with the undecipherable signs transmitted to us by extinct cultures, signs scattered around the world that now exist solely in material form as if they were empty shells. The title of the series evokes the hallucinatory journey made by Antonine Artaud, surrealist poet and playwright, to the secluded and little-known Tarahumaran people of Mexico in 1936. On my own travels around the world I've looked for and photographed 'mysterious symbols' engraved on rocks by earlier cultures. The images in this series are the result of rethinking and re-presenting those symbols as configurations of prints that directly illustrate their power. These works record my personal meditation on remnants, fragments and lost meanings.

Red, pink, orange, grey, tan: each consists of 36 pigment prints, individually framed, installed as one unit
121 x 121 cm




Black 1 & 2 - each consists of 25 pigment prints, individually framed, installed as one unit
234 x 234 cm

Yellow- 36 pigment prints, individually framed, installed as one unit
182.9 x 182.9