The Landscape of Loss

In the work The Landscape of Loss (2020), I employed an aerial view of the Lut Desert which references its actual geological features, combined with my subjective imagining of the area possessing water and life while still acknowledging the nature of Lut as a desert. Lut has gained its geologic characteristics through the dominance of both fluidity and aridity over the course of deep time. Given that these elements can only manifest in the absence of one another, The Landscape of Loss emphasises the contradictory history of the Lut. Furthermore, I employed the motif of the biologically shaped yardangs as a symbolic memorial of the area’s lost lives. The association between the Lut history and my personal experience of my hometown is further expressed in this artwork. My method of working finds parallels with Grayson Perry, who writes ‘I absorb the influences and ideas of the landscape I am in and then they form me’ (as cited in Walsh, 2016, p. 289).

In a personal interpretation of the Lut’s landforms and aesthetics, fictional mega-yardangs move across the map toward a ‘water source’ which ‘pools’ on the ground, linking the floor to the wall. The allusion to water in this work reflects its significant role in sustaining life. There is no differentiation of the water as the small ripples gradually appear in the continuum of the body of the desert within the same tonal range. It is thus presented as a fiction and a false hope as there is no more water in the desert than there are vast creatures.