Through a rectangular, cut-out window, two weathered objects emerge from and crumble back into the undefined, dusty, red earth environment that makes up Nancy Evans dioramic installation in the Proxy Gallery. The huddled, troubled forms eventually reveal themselves as two small shoes that take on greater size and metaphorical weight when positioned within the cramped, altered space of the gallery. Phantom limbs, bodies, past lives, and lost identities are all conjured up by these simple shoes anti-monumentalized in this faux desert landscape.

Singled out from a sea of desert detritus, the shoes were in the latter stages of a hyper-accelerated deterioration process when Evans cast them and created foam, urethane, and dirt replicas. Playing with the tradition of bronzed baby shoes and their sentimental resistance against the passage of time, the piece carries more weight suggesting the futility of human efforts against brute natural forces. “The desert takes you into this other place, a place where everything just falls apart, and I wanted to utilize that in my work.”