Noah Travis Phillips


Dukkha

debris, dirt, dust, residue, scraps, shavings, dregs, & etc.
high-resolution scan of single session of sweeping the artist's Studio
dimensions and media/substrate variable

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testicles nailed to a white wall with blood dripping downward
testicles nailed to the wall with blood dripping downward testicles nailed to a white wall with a common nail with blood dripping downward testicles nailed to a white wall with a common nail with blood dripping downward


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    Dukkha is a humble artwork composed of scans of sweepings from my studio floor. Each image is one session of sweeping (though this is not something I do every day, lol) translated through high-resolution scanning. Dust, hair, paper fibers, fragments of drawings and prints, and unidentifiable particulate matter are elevated into a field of intricate visual information, revealing an overlooked record of lived and creative activity.
    The title references the Buddhist concept of dukkha, often translated as suffering, unease, or the fundamental friction of existence (the crooked axis). Rather than dramatizing this condition, the work attends to its quiet, persistent production and accumulation – the detritus of making, moving, and inhabiting space. Each scan functions as both document and transformation, shifting debris from the abject to the perceptible, from the incidental to the intentional.
    Presented within the context of the Festival of the Smallest, Dukkha foregrounds scale not only in physical terms but in perceptual and conceptual ones. What is typically dismissed as trivial or minor becomes the site of sustained attention. The work invites viewers into a slowed encounter with material that resists spectacle, offering instead a dense, almost cosmic micro-landscape composed of the smallest remains of daily practice(s).


part of Festival of the Smallest 2026, curated by Frans van Lent


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bio
    Noah Travis Phillips is an experimental collage artist working with their private media archive of “made, found, and modified” images to interrelate the personal, mythological, occult, cultural, and ecological. Their practice explores the posthuman and the Anthropocene through a range of digital and physical formats. In tandem, they aim to subtly insert themselves into art history by cultivating a personal legend or parafiction.
    They are an artist, educator, and scholar. (BA, Naropa University, Fine Art and Environmental Studies; MFA, University of Denver, Emergent Digital Practices). They are Assistant Professor & FabLab (Z-Space) Coordinator at Rocky Mountain College of Art + Design.
    They have exhibited extensively locally, nationally, internationally, and virtually.