The Celestial Stag of West Virginia

Overview

A fading historical labor conflict unearthed; a mythological beast's political underbelly unveiled. Inspired by Jorge Luis Borges's "Book of Imaginary Beings," this work collides disparate archival material to mine the haunted undercurrents of the most intense battle on US soil since the civil war. Deadpan newsprint language intended to obscure is itself both obscured and irradiated—an uncanny archeology of what threatens to become an impossibly remote past. But here, a luminous ritual of return.