David Nasca

David Nasca
Oak Park, IL United States

This body of work titled “Queer Taphonomy” explores the Burgess Shale fossil bed. In Summer 2022, I attend an artist residency in Banff, Alberta, Canada where I worked with geologists, paleontologists, and park rangers studying the fossils of the Burgess Shale. First discovered, and subsequently misinterpreted, by Charles Doolittle Walcott in 1909, the fossil bed allows a complete glimpse into a thriving marine ecosystem during the Cambrian era, over 500 million years ago. During the Cambrian, life was evolving at an explosive rate and experimenting with new forms in an event called the Cambrian Explosion, or sometimes “Biological Big Bang”.

Dimensions: 6 x 9 x 1 inches