Megan Mjaatvedt’s Densely Wooded and Precipitous Mountain consists of two components: the first, a cluster of small prints featuring segments of battle maps from American wars; the second, a large projection animating a still photograph of a marsh on the edge of a battlefield. The title of the piece is taken from an illustrated map of the Battle of Greenbrier River from the Civil War.

The images on the prints are borrowed from maps of military campaigns conducted on American soil, digitally manipulated with hand drawn interventions. The images are both natural features and man-made structures, landmarks isolated from context and mired in the resulting ambiguity. The trees, trenches, and stone walls are bound to unspecified places and events; they become disowned from record and are abandoned as stalled moments that drag behind the normal progression of time.

The animation projected on the floor is mute but rhythmically evocative, bleeding color frantically for just over a minute before resigning to black. It counters the cluster of prints in scale and exuberance, performing within the confines of its own temporal lag. The video abruptly repeats itself and struggles to push the same frozen scene into sustained movement and development, undermining the stillness of the prints while remaining equally stagnant.