THE CONCURRENT PRESENCE
We see a valley in the Mojave Desert, California. A woman—the artist—enters the frame from the right, her back facing the camera. The protagonist, wearing a black dress and holding an electric-blue parasol, looks almost surreal in this barren landscape.
The protagonist walks calmly but determinedly on a straight path towards the horizon until she is no longer visible. The action of walking visualizes both ephemerality and the passing of pain and loss. At the same time, Schmid stages the walk as a meditative process—in the vastness of the landscape she reflects on the eternity of thoughts.
With a clear and poetic visual language, Desert Flower is a universal exploration into loss and ephemerality and the various mechanisms of coping with these sensations.
Text by Sophie Haslinger