Overburden

“overburden: (verb) to give someone a weight that is too great to carry. ​ overburden: (noun) the geologic material that is removed to expose a desired underground mineral”

From 1902-1987 the Dodge Phelps Corporation dumped massive piles of slag along the United States/Mexico border in Douglas, Arizona. This final product of copper mining is a toxic landscape defined by radioactivity, infertile soil, and acidified rain and rivers. It is a dramatic and dangerous place that has become a theater for United States politics as enacted by border patrol employees, walls, and myriad forms of surveillance and incarceration technologies. Overburden documents Nina’s attempt to care for and carry away the slag. She uses hand-sewn devices, accentuating both her strength and her softness, to uplift and dignify the pulverized, leached, melted, dumped, and forgotten rocks.