Terra Incognita: Joshua Tree 
Virtual Artist Talk with Georgia D. McGovern and Sebastijan Jemec in conversation with Em Joseph
Sunday October 17, 2pm PST on Zoom | Recording HERE.

Terra Incognita is a performative sculpture project created by artist Georgia D. McGovern and designer Sebastijan Jemec. It is a series of tents that are each temporarily activated in a unique wilderness (or potentially even urban) location, immersing the user in the environmental specificity of that particular site. Each iteration highlights the micro in the macro and explores concepts of shelter and rewilding. The project is experiential in that when the user activates the art piece, they become a performer and their experience within nature, using the framework of the tent, becomes the art itself. 

Terra Incognita: Joshua Tree is the first iteration of this project and is located on a boulder field in Bureau of Land Management land adjacent to the Joshua Tree National Park. During research visits to BoxoPROJECTS in 2019 and 2020, Georgia and Sebastijan designed a site-specific lightweight tent fitted to work in one specific boulder formation. This tent will not work anywhere else as it relies on the rock structure to hold itself up. The project is not just the tent, but the whole experience of hiking to the site and participating in the landscape, setting up and sleeping in the tent, exploring the area, engaging with the elements, the flora, and fauna, and specific boulders that make up the site for the shelter. This project explores themes of rewilding, public and private land, geology and ecology, outdoor recreation, participatory art, shelter, the elements, human scale, etc… 

In April 2021, Georgia and Sebastijan returned to Joshua Tree and launched the project with a small group of friends and colleagues. The group hiked to the site, witnessed the installation of the tent and camped overnight. Filmmaker Em Joseph accompanied them and has produced a short film about the experience. Please join us online for an introduction to Terra Incognita, a viewing of the short film and a discussion and q&a to follow.

We acknowledge that the land on which this project takes place is the ancestral home and unceded territory of the Serrano, the Chemehuevi, and the Cahuilla people.

About the Artists:
Georgia D. McGovern is a Vermont and New York-based artist. Georgia grew up between Alphabet City in NYC with her artist mother and living in a van roaming around Europe with her street musician father. She holds an MFA from The New York Studio School and a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She also completed a 4 year apprenticeship in the gilding technique of verre églomisé with Miriam Ellner. Georgia has had solo and group shows most recently at BCE Editions (Solo Show), New York, NY; Brackett Creek Exhibitions, Bozeman, MT; Furnace Gallery, Falls Village, CT; BoxoPROJECTS, Joshua Tree, CA; Safe Gallery, Brooklyn, NY; Land Gallery, Kansas City, MO (Solo Show); and Baba Yaga, Hudson, NY. Recent curatorial projects include, “In The Weeds” at Olympia, NY, and “Bulletin” (ongoing) at Citygroup, NY. 

Artist website: https://www.georgiamcgovern.com

Sebastijan Jemec is a New York based designer. He was born in Slovenija (then Yugoslavia) and moved to the United States with his family as a child. He studied architecture and fine art at the University of Virginia before pursuing a multi-disciplinary design career. He currently resides in Brooklyn, NY and works as a product designer, carpenter, and furniture maker. He (as well as Georgia) is an active member of Citygroup, a collective of designers and artists dedicated to investigating pressing contemporary issues of housing and shortcomings of the architectural profession. 

Artist website: https://citygroup.nyc