“The Land of Desolation” by Jayden Itejere received an honorable mention in our BYU Book of Mormon Art Contest.
Itejere, an art major, was inspired by Mormon 3:5. He writes, “To be able to understand any group of people, it is important to understand the environment in which they live. For many cultures, the land is linked to prosperity, history, and spirituality. Artistic depictions of the Book of Mormon typically spotlight the human figure, assumably interest modern viewers and centralize certain characters’ stories. While artistic depictions that focus on people can of course reveal elements of that person’s culture, I wanted to delve into this underrepresented realm of Book of Mormon art: people’s connections to their land. This piece aims to capture the melancholy of the destroyed Nephites leaving their lands for the Land of Desolation as describe in Mormon 3:5. The aridness of the land reflects the symbolic state of the people. Being divorced from their original land mirrors the Nephites’s separation from their righteous history.”