Wednesday, February 28, 2024 - 12:00pm to 1:00pm
Isaiah Bertagnolli
FFA Library Annex
Location: Please note this colloquium will take place in the Frick Fine Arts Library Annex, where we will be viewing rare materials. Food and drink are not permitted – please plan accordingly.
In the 1980s, antinuclear artist-activists played with the tropes of cartography and data visualization, which allowed audiences to see themselves in relationship to the arms race. This colloquium examines the work of two artists in particular, Sharon Gilbert and Barbara Donachy. Gilbert made a series of artist books that tackled issues of nuclear energy, waste disposal, and disasters. Her largest, A Nuclear Atlas (published by Women’s Studio Workshop, 1982), collaged New York Times coverage to map global nuclear accidents. Donachy, meanwhile, made a 35,000-piece model of the entire U.S. nuclear arsenal out of clay, an installation titled Amber Waves of Grain. I show how these artworks register the unreliability of so-called objective representation strategies and entangled themselves with antinuclear platforms.