Model Desert, Sandbox Monument

Abstract

When Robert Smithson visited Passaic, New Jersey, the town where he was born, he recognized in the deserted sandbox a ‘model desert’ and a ‘sandbox monument.’ Following Smithson’s lead, this narrative will thread spatial instances that explore how a box full of sand, where children usually play, could encapsulate the potency of some vast barren lands eliciting war and destruction, burial, and death. In the hands of some players, the sandbox also becomes a monument to unattainable lands, a monument to the passage of time—a playground to a future yet to come.