interventions: Salting the Earth
Salting the earth, or sowing with salt is the ritual of spreading salt on conquered cities to symbolize a curse on their re-inhabitation. It originated as a symbolic practice in the ancient Near East and became a well-established folkloric motif in the Middle Ages. Various Hittite and Assyrian texts speak of ceremonially strewing salt, minerals, or plants (weeds, "cress", or kudimmu, which are associated with salt and desolation over destroyed cities. At least as early as 1863 various texts claimed that the Roman general Scipio Aemilianus plowed over and sowed the city of Carthage with salt after defeating it in the Third Punic War, sacking it, and enslaving the survivors in 146 BC.
Two rogue interventions, New York City, 2020.
materials: acrylic paint, archival ink, arches paper (30 X 22 inches)
