| Herd appears pastoral at first glance—a group of bison grazing across a golden field, rendered in metallic tones that shimmer with reverence. But the title fractures that serenity. It invokes the shepherd, the flock, the moral imperative to guide, control, and contain. In religious systems, the herd is a metaphor for followers—obedient, vulnerable, in need of tending. But here, the bison complicate that metaphor.
Bison are not sheep. They are sacred, wild, and historically hunted to near extinction. Their presence evokes Indigenous cosmologies, ecological reverence, and spiritual autonomy. To herd them is not to guide—it is to dominate. The metallic golds elevate their status, but also freeze them in symbolic amber: revered, yet endangered.
Mounted on denim, the work resists sanctity. The frayed edges and tactile surface suggest wear, labor, and cultural residue. Denim becomes a secular canvas for sacred tension.
Herd becomes a study in moral displacement—how one belief system can overwrite another, how spiritual wildness can be domesticated, hunted, or erased.
This is a quiet elegy. A compact canvas of symbolic extinction, where morality is not just a system of care, but a mechanism of control.
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