Aconcagua Apocalypse

Shannon Meadows, Penitentes, 2024, Oil on Cavas, 48” x 60”

I make work that investigates the fragility and fury of the human state through both figurative and landscape imagery. With figurative subjects, I explore gender and social inequities found in personal relationships where women or the unempowered are pervasively denigrated to the disadvantage of the whole. Alpine landscapes depict the indifferent power of nature to heal or to harm. The dialog between these genres contrasts human passion with life’s relentless impermanence.

This small body of work, part of an ongoing series including 50 Year God’s Eye View, contemplates the true story of the disastrous leadership dynamics that led to a 1973 failed expedition to Aconcagua, an Argentinian mountain, the highest outside of Asia. The sole woman on the journey was the best educated and most experienced climber other than the local guides. She and a NASA engineer did not return alive. Reference material is expedition photographs: some contemporary and others from the film developed 30 years later upon discovering her lost camera in a receding glacier. Feral marks, broken lines, and ragged edges made with myriad tools imbue a film of history. Hazy focus in a balanced palette of transparent, unnatural hues query fateful choices.

In evolving from a lengthy career as a female technology executive, required to go along to get along within the business world, I find myself now wanting to speak out. I have progressed from the safety of the observer to the front lines of the revolution. Though my work highlights power disparities, and human failings, it carries an undercurrent of optimism for positive cultural metamorphosis. Human survival in nature requires discarding gender hierarchies and dissolves the cultural packaging to reveal the deeper truth below.

June 7, 2024