HEIDI SCHWEGLER — FAMILIAR

There’s something empowering about understanding how the body can be strengthened, repaired, and transformed—that we possess the ability to pursue therapy to alter our minds, and consciously choose to adapt. In this project, the artist has sculpted her “familiar”—a spiritual alter ego closely tied to the self, often manifesting as an animal. She blends her form with the spirits of the desert: the coyote, mountain lion, and roadrunner, intertwined with the resilient cholla  and found desert detritus. Set within a wall of boulders, this piece explores the intricate relationship between humans and the Mojave Desert. Using sculptural techniques and digital tools, the work highlights the drive for survival amid climate change, echoing each creature’s (and plant’s) struggle to just not die.

About the artist: Heidi Schwegler works in the interstitial ruins of Beijing, Los Angeles, New York City, and the Mojave Desert. She rescues and resynthesizes scraps from the bowels of the megalopolis — chicken bones, Big Gulps, broken signs, lost shoes, crumpled pylons, takeout containers — into facsimiles with cast glass, gold, silver, wax, resulting in artwork that persists in a “living death.” Schwegler is the founder director of the arts nonprofit Yucca Valley Material Lab

Artist website: heidischwegler.com