Naiads of the New World
Indigenous peoples may or may not have embodied rivers with female spirits. Classically educated Europeans who mapped the New World, however, were likely familiar with the river nymphs of Greek mythology. These ink drawings on North American colonial maps mark the passage from millennia of “uncharted territory” to the eradication of indigenous cultures, and extensive environmental changes, that began during European exploration and settlement. Their bodies passively incorporate waterways renamed by the colonizing peoples.
Ink and pencil on archival reproductions of North American colonial era maps, sizes variable, 2018-2019
