Minneapolis-based artist and philosophy scholar Jan Estep creates text-centric images, hand-embroidered linens, scripted narrative video, and critical essays about other artists, all which investigate the function and power of language. Filmed in the high deserts of southeastern Utah, her video Ad Infinitum (2005) explores the philosophical journey of an optimist and a skeptic as they make their way through the desert. After researching the desert biomes in North America and the geology of the Sonoran, Chihuahuan, Mojave, and Great Basin deserts, Estep has created drawings and word poems based on the names given to various sites in those landscapes. And a recent project about Ludwig Wittgenstein (2007-ongoing) explores the philosopher’s life and writing. At the Contemporary, Estep screens her recent video work and stages a public performance on the poetics and paradoxes of language.