Jonas N.T. Becker: A Hole is not a Void

This exhibition focuses on themes of land, labor, and extraction and represents Becker’s ongoing work connecting issues in Appalachia to broader questions of environmental injustice and inequity. Born in West Virginia, Becker explores how systems of power place value on the body and the landscape and how private interests exploit both across generations. Viewers are asked to consider the literal removal of mountains in Appalachia, global economic dependence on mining resources, and the inextricable relationship between the personal and the political.

Viewers first encounter a series titled Blank Topographies (2017–present), which confronts established systems of value for land in the United States, highlights the historic relationship between property and inequity, and opens space for alternative systems of value. Becker refaces topographical relief maps of the country’s most expensive mountaintop acreage. They paint the surfaces white and strip them of common value markers, such as city names, natural resources, and cultural landmarks.

An adjacent installation of the series Better or Equal Use (2020–present) depicts former mountaintop removal mines that were redeveloped for public use under the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977. Utilizing a self-devised photographic printing process, Becker incorporates coal dust from these locations to produce images that represent what the sites have become—including prisons and big-box stores. The installation also features sculptures made of coal and a large-scale floor work that recreates the original topography of a mountain that no longer exists, having been flattened by mining activity.

A separate gallery presents the photographic series Thank G-d for Mississippi (2009–10). Created by suspending a camera over various edges and cliffs that are common sites of fatality in West Virginia, the photographs consider the personal impacts of larger socioeconomic issues. Departing from the long history of documentary portraits of poverty in Appalachia, the photographs put the viewer in the subject's position, offering a view you could only achieve after deciding to jump. 

Class Struggle, a short film made with support from the Wexner Center’s Film/Video Studio, also premieres in the exhibition. The project explores the transmission of politics across generations, focusing on Becker and their mother playing the 1978 board game Class Struggle, a socialist version of Monopoly. Through their conversation, Becker’s mother considers the impact of her involvement in the political movements of the 1960s and 70s, ultimately resolving that the teaching she instilled in the next generation is her greatest legacy.

Becker’s short film Holographic Mountain will screen in The Box through August 31. 

IMAGE CAPTION
Jonas N.T. Becker, Better or Equal Use: Coalfield Expressway on former Bull Creek Mountain, 2020/2024. Coal, gelatin, dichromate, and paper, 20 x 24 in. Courtesy of the artist.