Rio Asch Phoenix
While Light Still Falls Here

January 11th - February 2nd 2025
Opening Reception: Saturday, January 11th, 7-10pm

Monte Vista Projects is pleased to present While Light Still Falls Here, by Rio Asch Phoenix.

At the northern edge of Los Angeles city limits, there is a 300-acre piece of wild land. It is home to oak trees and sagebrush, year-round water, gullies and streams and mountain lions. It is the ancestral homeland to the Gabrieleno-Tongva and Fernandeño Tataviam Band of Mission Indians. It is now slated for development into a luxury gated community called "Canyon Hills.” While Light Still Falls Here memorializes a thriving ecosystem in an effort to not only preserve the land, but also to question what we value most in the face of the climate crisis.

If construction begins, it would mean the destruction of mature sycamore and oak trees, it would mean grading some ridges down by over 80 feet, it would mean paving over countless streams and waterfalls, and it would mean years of noise and pollution in the community. In a city that is in the middle of a housing crisis, where over 45,000 people are experiencing homelessness, another gated development of luxury homes is unconscionable.

In the system we are all operating under, land like Canyon Hills only holds value as a place for potential development. This system is enormously successful at creating wealth, but it erases the inherent value found in local ecosystems like this one. This work is both a memorial to an immensely beautiful place and a catalyst for people to imagine a more inclusive and sustainable land ethic - one that looks at these ridges and canyons vibrating with life and places just as much value on their continued existence as the potential profit that could be extracted from them.

I have hiked and fallen and crawled through this place for over a year, desperately trying to materialize its light into physical negatives. I might not be able to stop the land from being destroyed, but at least I can bear witness to its beauty while it still exists.

In conjunction with this exhibition please join us on a walk near the site, a closing ceremony featuring NCH leaders, and a risograph print available at the opening.

NCH

No Canyon Hills (NCH) is a community coalition forged in solidarity with the plant and animal communities of the Verdugo Mountains in Los Angeles, ancestral land and unceded territory of the Fernandeño Tataviam Band of Mission Indians, and the Gabrieleno-Tongva Band of Mission Indians. Catalyzed by a proposal to build a luxury gated development on 300+ acres of intact native habitat in the Verdugos, NCH deploys cooperative actions and interventionist strategies across social, political, educational, and legislative registers. NCH works as a multiform entity to conceive and realize urgent anti-colonial land conservation solutions.

BIO

Rio Asch Phoenix (b. 1996) is a Los Angeles-based photographer documenting the contested boundaries between built and natural environments. Raised in North Florida, his work focuses on the intersection of these sites and the stories of destruction, renewal, and harmony that emerge from them. His photographs have appeared in Contemporary Art Review LA, Telegraph Magazine, and KCRW. Recently, he received an Honor Award from the American Society of Landscape Architects and was selected for Review Santa Fe 2024. He holds a BFA in Photography from Northeastern University (2019)