We Became the River on Fire

About

Was it the river on fire that made us what we became?

Was it the cup that we drank from, or what it contained?

—U.S. Girls, Rage of Plastics

We Became the River on Fire features work by Tanya Brodsky, Katy Cowan, and Anna Mayer that explores the boundaries between ourselves and the objects or symbols we use to represent ourselves. These works play with the apparent presence of the artist's hand in the work of art, or the way the artwork demonstrates its own production.

In April of 2016, a group of children and parents participating in an Easter egg hunt in England’s Surrey county noticed a National Police Air Service helicopter overhead, which was in pursuit of two suspected burglars. According to a police spokesman:

Initially, the presence of the police helicopter was enough to entertain the children and parents, but it didn’t take the intrepid residents long to realize they were witnessing a police pursuit. The children quickly formed an arrow on the ground in the middle of a ploughed field to guide the helicopter in the direction of the fleeing pair. The helicopter crew relayed this information to officers on the ground and a short time later two men were arrested.

When the children of Surrey laid down in the ploughed field they made manifest a number of overlapping contemporary concerns: the dissolution of self into symbol; how that dissolution is repeated in the relationship between self and environment; and how authority or authorship serves to translate between the parts of these relationships. We Became the River on Fire brings together artworks that take a variety of approaches to these themes, seeking to explore the possibilities of what we may have already become.