The Walk Project: Desert Walk Series

Desert Walk Series

Photo & video // Instagram logo Instagram: @januaryyoonchoart

Make a Tax-deductible DONATION to The Walk Project: The Walk Project is a fiscally sponsored project of New York Foundation for the Arts, a 501(c)(3), tax-exempt organization.

Desert Walk performances by artist January Yoon Cho

Desert Walk performances by January Yoon Cho

The Walk Project explores the connection with our environments. The project features America’s diverse desert landscapes with superimposed digital drawings of various biological life forms over my walk performances. Years in the making, the project captured about a hundred walks from Arizona, California, Nevada, and New Mexico. The edited scenes turned into prints with drawings and a video with overlaid animated drawings. The Desert Walk is the first installment of The Walk Project. The Desert Walk Series Is the first installment of The Walk Project. It consists of photographic prints and a video with overlaid graphics. 

I take photographs and videos of myself walking in different locations with an assistant who can press the shutter after I set up the camera composition. After editing photographs and videos, drawings of biological life forms are created to develop a narrative. The drawings of plant cells, pollen, reproductive organs, embryos, and skeletons tell a story of interconnection with the earth cycle of life and the co-existence of humankind with our surroundings. The representational and imaginative drawings echo the scientific evidence and explore whimsical imagination. The simplicity of the white silhouettes with line drawings of suggestive details become a seed and potentiality for a new tale.

My personal journey from a difficult pregnancy to motherhood encourages me to look closer at the relationship between the biological life forms and their habitats. The Walk Project encapsulates beauty, destruction, and preservation of the land we live in.

The Desert Walk Video 
– Total duration: 5 min | Audio: Bass speaker highly recommended for the best viewing experience. May not deliver the lower pitch sounds without a bass speaker. | Walk performance & video by January Yoon Cho, Music by Faten Kanaan

Scenes in the order of appearance in The Desert Walk Video
1. Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes, Death Valley, California: Human survival with extinct and endangered animals.
2. Coal power plant of Navajo Generating Station, Navajo Nation, Arizona: Walking with the human fetus and skeletons.
3. Zabriskie Point, Death Valley, California: Disappearance of the Monarch Butterflies.
4. Desert storm, Death Valley, California: A birth of a human.
5. Salt flat, Death Valley, California: Hexagons found in nature.
6. Bonnie Claire, Nevada: Pollen and seeds floating.
7. Artist’s Palette, Death Valley, California: Dreaming of fossils.
8. Devil’s Golf Course, Death Valley, California: Interconnection with human and animals.
9. Three Rivers Petroglyph, New Mexico: animals worshipping the sun gods.
10. Ubehebe Crater, Death Valley, California.
11. Besti-Wilderness, New Mexico: Fungi and chicken embryos as the descendants of dinosaurs that references the natural rock formation of the landscapes.
12. White Sands National Monument, New Mexico: Cacti and vulva succulent plants referencing the male and female coexistence for creating a new life.
13. Monument Valley, Arizona: Plant seed embryos moving through a female reproductive organ and spreading out to the sacred land.
14. Radio antennas of the astronomical radio observatories in The Very Large Array, New Mexico: Animal and human embryos developing in stages.
15. Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes, California.
16.Zabriskie Point, California.
17. Sedona, Arizona.
18. Antelope Canyon, Arizona.
19. Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks National Monument, New Mexico.
20. Chaco Culture National Historical Park, New Mexico.
21. Wildrose Charcoal Kilns, Death Valley, California.
22. Salt Flats, Death Valley, California.
23. Artists Palette, Death Valley, California.
24. White Sands National Monument, New Mexico.
25. Golden Canyon, Death Valley, California.
26. The Very Large Array, New Mexico.

Large Prints: Walk performance with drawings | Limited editions of 3 | 24″ x 36″ | Archival pigment inkjet print

Small Prints: Photographs of walk performances | Limited editions of 10 | 11″ x 14″ | Archival pigment inkjet print

• The Walk Project is a fiscally sponsored project of New York Foundation for the Arts, a 501(c)(3), tax-exempt organization.
Click here to make a tax-deductible donation to support The Walk Project.

• Funding for The Walk Project has been made possible in part by the Puffin Foundation and Barbara Deming Memorial Funds. 

NYFA_fiscal sponsorship          Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, INC logo        Puffin Foundation Logo

Water Walk Series

The Water Walk Series is currently a work in progress. The finished location photo/video shootings include migrating birds in Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge, New Mexico; dead trees in Driftwood Beach, Jekyll Island, GA; calcium carbonate deposit formation in Mono Lake, CA; toxic dust area of Salton Sea, CA; and the Red beads of the fruits in Cranberry Bog, Halifax, Massachusetts.