Plagues, 2017
 
More than half a century ago, anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss observed that the apparent technological “simplicity” of Indigenous societies in fact concealed worlds that embody “a life worth living.” What appears as simplicity is instead the result of modern myopia, a blindness shaped by the ideology of “development,” which has driven humanity further into ecological and cultural ruin. This idea of development has often advanced through the destruction of Indigenous societies and the looting of their cultural and territorial resources.

Today, that same development buries the Earth beneath layers of concrete. More than half of all concrete ever produced has been manufactured in just the past two decades; humanity has generated enough to thinly cover the surface of the entire planet. The concrete blocks in this work allude to the exponential growth of industrial society, its insatiable demand for resources, and the resulting exploitation of lands once home to Indigenous populations. The teeth evoke the primal tool of survival—the first means of breaking down the natural substrate into the energy that sustains life.

The work derives from dental molds taken from Yanomami individuals during an anthropological expedition to the Brazilian Amazon in 1971. From these molds, seven dental arches are reconstructed as a symbolic “primal human tool,” but here they are imprisoned within concrete blocks. This entrapment reflects the self-imprisoning trajectory of industrial society, confined by its own structures of concrete, while at the same time subjecting Indigenous peoples to parallel forms of dispossession and confinement. The relationship between industrial and Indigenous societies has largely been marked by oppression, cultural destruction, and ongoing territorial looting—treating these populations not as equal human communities but as obstacles to be subdued or erased.