Martine Dawson — Faultlines

From July 17 to September 13, the MEP Studio presents _Faultlines_, a photography project by Martine Dawson focusing on houses in Butte, a former mining town in Montana. In these domestic spaces, the traces of a landscape shaped by extraction and the mythology of westward conquest remain quietly present. Nestled in the heart of Montana, Butte rose to prominence in the late 19th century through copper mining, which profoundly transformed its landscape and structured every aspect of social life. Today, the town seems suspended between memory and the present. Its streets, historic homes, and land scarred by industry form an environment that is both inhabited and spectral, where the traces of an industrial past linger. Martine Dawson enters this world through the houses themselves. Thrown up rapidly during the mining boom, they have since been transformed: unstable foundations, successive additions, patches and repairs that speak of lives shaped by necessity. Over the course of her stays, the artist observes how residents maintain their bond with these places, where traces of the past surface in the gestures of everyday life. Shifting from photographs of exteriors to interiors, details and textures, _Faultlines_ reveals the home as a space where different timeframes overlap. Pairing contemporary images with archival material, the exhibition frames these dwellings as surfaces of memory, where mining history, collective imagination, and present-day ways of living intersect. Curatorship by Laurie Hurwitz.