The Swallows is a multimedia project about the geological formation, man-made induction, and psychological import of sinkholes. These terrestrial features, while intimating an incremental, geological time, may also be sudden, cataclysmic events. On one hand plainly topographical, sinkholes approximate a kind of dream logic wherein at any moment one might drop into an alter-territory. They are, precisely, events that "take place." They are edits in the landscape. The exhibition utilized models, drawings, monoprints, paintings, photographs, video, and text to illuminate these peculiar site-incidents.

Deborah Stratman is a Chicago-based artist and filmmaker interested in landscapes and systems. Much of her work points to the relationships between physical environments and human struggles for power and control that play out on the land. Most recently, they have questioned elemental historical narratives about faith, freedom, expansionism, surveillance, sonic deception, sinkholes, and levitation. She has exhibited internationally at venues including MoMA NY, Centre Pompidou, Hammer Museum, Mercer Union, Witte de With, the Whitney Biennial, and at festivals including Sundance, Viennale, CPH/DOX, Oberhausen, Ann Arbor, Full Frame, and Rotterdam. Stratman is the recipient of Fulbright and Guggenheim fellowships, a Creative Capital grant, and an Alpert Award. She teaches at the University of Illinois at Chicago.