Marguerite Humeau’s 160-Acre Earthwork in Colorado Honors a Planet in Incurable Pain

Marguerite Humeau: Orisons, 2023. PHOTO JULIA ANDRÉONE AND FLORINE BONAVENTURE. COURTESY THE ARTIST AND BLACK CUBE NOMADIC ART MUSEUM.

“Have you ever cared for someone in incurable pain?” asked the French artist Marguerite Humeau as we ambled around her 160-acre earthwork in the Colorado desert. “I have,” she added decisively. Was she referring to the planet Earth—specifically, to this arid landscape she’d been tending to for the past three years as it endures a two-decade megadrought—or to a beloved human? I suspected a bit of both.

One must tread lightly around Humeau’s latest work, which is titled Orisons and located in the San Luis Valley. Nestled under a big sky, the work extends further than the eye can see, spanning 160 acres. More than 80 small, kinetic sculptures are scattered about, many of them just over a foot tall. Visitors must remain attentive so as not to miss, or bump into, these sculptures—and, so as not to step into one of the numerous ankle-deep kangaroo mouse holes that litter the landscape.

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