Beatriz Cortez, Glacial Pothole, 2020. Steel. Installation view of Becoming Atmosphere. Courtesy of the artist and Commonwealth and Council. Photo: Marc Walker at 18th Street Art Center.
Made of steel frame and sheet metal, Glacial Pothole evokes an ancient rock perforated by the melting glaciers and by rocks spinning in its interior. During the last Ice Age, the melting ice perforated rocks and moved large masses of mass from one landscape to another. These rocks, marked by the ice and by their travels, differ in mineral content, in look, in size, and shape, from the native rocks of their local landscape. The matter that forms these rocks documents their migration before the human era, as well as the moment in which they emerged from the ice cap cover. As they were exposed to the light and to cosmic rays, these migrating rocks were also touched by radiation, generating a process that documents their migration while marking different temporalities and making visible the planetary nature of ancient migration.
BEATRIZ CORTEZ 