about the art

When you are born – you cry – but the whole world is overjoyed

When you die – the world cries – but you may find the great liberation

— so the world took turns crying today, it seems, and every day —

— Tibetan Book of the Dead

Through film and sculpture, Nat Evans and Janelle Iglesias consider death not only as a personal passage, but as a planetary one. Endings—of lives, of species, of ecological balance—reveal the interdependence between human histories and the natural world. In their own ways, each work asks how we reckon with what is lost, and how that reckoning might change the way we live.

My Old Friend Death, a film by composer and sound artist Nat Evans, draws on the prairie ecosystem as a lens through which to explore mortality, climate change, and family history. Using a collage of spoken text, video, music, and imagery from Nat’s midwest family archives, Nat moves between the intimate and the vast, from his personal history to a view of the natural world in flux. The soundtrack, performed by cellist Lori Goldston and guitarist Will Hayes, threads these elements together into a meditation on the inevitability—and necessity—of death in the cycles of life.

Janelle Iglesias’ sculpture, Crab, depicts a crab shell embedded with plastic straws, bringing together the organic and the synthetic in a quietly unsettling way. Central to Janelle’s practice is the way objects speak—how their histories, politics, and poetics intersect. The materials in Crab, collected during her walks along the beaches of Southern California, hold stories of place and the natural world colliding with the human one. In this work, the delicate shell and the discarded straws connect with Nat’s film to articulate shared grief for a natural world under strain and a recognition of the complications that human life brings to these places.

for a deeper dive

Nat Evans first created this film for MFYI in 2021. Since then, he reworked the music and created an audio release by the same title. The album is a feast of lush strings, floating guitar tones, and hovering synth textures woven together with collected field recordings. Like the film, it features contributions from cellist Lori Goldston and guitarist Will Hayes, with recorded chants by Soto Zen priest Hoitsu Suzuki Roshi. If you loved the music in this film, you will love this album. Listen and purchase it here.

We love libraries and so does Janelle Iglesias! To get to know more of Janelle’s work, we recommend exploring her site-specific artwork for the new Pacific Highlands Ranch Branch Library in San Diego, California. Her piece, TEXT/TILE, is an immersive courtyard installation made of terra-cotta tiles, each holding a letterform to create a wordfind in English, Spanish, and Kumeyaay to reflect the land’s history and native plantings. Inspired by the clay tablets of early libraries, the work connects ancient traditions with the modern-day library, inviting visitors to discover words, reflect, and engage with the space in new ways. Watch the video above about how she made the piece or, if you're local to San Diego, check it out in person.

Meet the Artists