Red Dirt Rug, 2021
Loose red Oklahoma soil, imprinted with modified shoe soles

Working with finely sifted and refined clay soil from Oklahoma, Detrixhe offers a meditation on the complex relationship between people and the land on which they rely. The red dirt evokes the fraught history of landscape—the Trail of Tears, the Dust Bowl, and the crude oil that continues to be extracted from under its surface. Pressed into the form of a rug, the soil comes to point towards domesticity, as well as craft and the artist’s labor. Through her painstaking process of imprinting ornamental patterns with stamps made of the soles of discarded shoes, Detrixhe explores human impact on the land while also highlighting the regularly overlooked beauty of the earth we walk upon.

Courtesy of the artist.