Model Home is an installation-based exhibition that examines recent changes to the broader desert landscape because of increased development and population growth in the Phoenix metro area. Using architectural elements as a framework for display, alejandro t. acierto’s interdisciplinary practice unfolds as an expanded documentary project that relies on work across video, audio, photography, surface scans, and found objects. Highlighting how the land and its (nonhuman) inhabitants have been impacted by new settlements, urban expansion, and climate change, this broader project questions how value is assigned to land perceived as vacant or unoccupied. Looking toward circumstances that inevitably shift the balance of human and nonhuman relations, this work begins to ask: who gets to keep home in the desert?

Organized by Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art and curated by Julie Ganas, curator of engagement and digital initiatives, and Oliver Sayers, SMoCA coordinator.