et in Arcadia ego
The omnipresence of our garbage in the environment is my subject in et in Arcadia ego ("even in Arcadia am I"), an installation I first produced at Allegheny College using wall drawing and found materials. I surround the drawn components of this installation, a floating plastic bag and the text ET IN ARCADIA EGO, with a landscape constructed of found branches and greenery, interspersed with refuse. The presence of death even in an idyllic land was a well-known subject in neoclassical painting, most famously Poussin’s two allegories titled et in Arcadia ego; here the phrase refers to the trash we carelessly leave behind.