After the Camp Fire erased my childhood hometown of Paradise, California, I interviewed survivors. This anthropogenic fire devastated not only their lives, homes, and possessions, but their entire community, their ecosystem. All described a changed relationship with the ideas of security and control.
My work considers these personal reorientations within the larger context of habitat loss caused by climate change. I combine material and social remnants of the fire and its regional aftermath to create illusory shelters and documents. Through an interplay of materiality and absence, I intend to convey the vulnerability of interdependent human and natural systems and question the notion of refuge on our warming planet.