K. YOLAND

Operation Tumbleweed

Performance, video, text, sculpture, photography, 2018-ongoing

Selected images & documentation of performance work traveling through Texas, Northern Mexico, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida including site visits in Mobile, New Orleans, Presidio and Ojinaga (Mexico).



Operation Tumbleweed (2018-ongoing) combines performance, creative writing, filmmaking, and found object sculpture to explore the breaking point of landscapes either by border or body of water. As an interloper, K. Yoland deals directly with the Mexico/US border and subsequently with the more complicated issues around belonging, defense, and ownership over a landscape.


Beginning with a correspondence through letters, Operation Tumbleweed documents Yoland’s “kidnapping” of a tumbleweed inside a bulletproof container. Engaged in a dispute over the nature of borders, they travel together along the Mexico-U.S. border. Imbued with its own perspective, the tumbleweed speaks to national identity as an inherently political aspect of movement.

Travelling performance, letters, sculpture, photography and a multi-channel video installation are used to chronicle the migration and movement of the tumbleweed. Yoland approaches a serious topic by re-interpreting the iconic and deeply “North American” nature of tumbleweeds, immigration, freedom, and borders. The work examines personal agency and the fluid nature of identity.



Operation Tumbleweed was commissioned by Pensacola Museum of Art (2018) and has been exhibited with the museum as well as with Alabama Contemporary (2019) and L’école des Beaux-arts Nantes Saint Lazaire (2020) as solo exhibitions. It has featured as a lecture for the Museum of Modern Art Fortworth (2019), and as autofiction commissioned by Nasher Scupture Center (2018) p22-29.






︎ More images and videos for Operation Tumbleweed always coming soon.


© Copyright K. Yoland 2024