This project catalogues sites in Vieques, Puerto Rico in which palm trees were used as natural markers to designate sites of hazardous waste disposal. Planted by the US Military to demarcate dumping areas for munitions and other industrial wastes during their 60-year occupation of the island, these palm groves are currently managed by the US Department of Interior, Fish and Wildlife Service as “Conservation Zones.” This paradoxical designation veils the underlying environmental and health hazards of these former toxic waste dumps that in 2005 were included on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Superfund National Priorities List.

Contracts reproduces images of these sites using a screen-printing method in which ink is forced through a woven mesh that has some areas blocked by an impermeable substance. The resulting image is created in the areas where the ink passes through the screen and penetrates the canvas below. However, on top of the resulting representational image are overlaid multiple layers of black ink. What would normally be considered the final image of a beautiful tropical destination is thus exposed to additional passes of ink that cover it either entirely or partly. A counterpoint to the landscape’s apparent vitality, the final images depict a dividing, breaking, and partitioning of idyllic harmony.

Finally, these images function as documents, but also as contracts. The blocks of black ink overlaid on top of the representational image become a type of signature that at once bears witness to and nullifies what is represented within. The resulting tainting and fragmentation of these landscape images seek to echo the paradoxical condition of meaning associated with these sites.

Titled according to the obfuscating military acronyms for the waste disposal sites (SWMU stands for “Solid Waste Management Unit”; AOC stands for “Area of Concern”), in each print the skein of black ink functions as an anonymous, all-seeing signature, bearing witness to these tropical falsehoods and to a botched duty of care.