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Will Wilson: AIR / Survey


January 23 - March 27,2021

From the UT VAC: "AIR / Survey, an exhibition from Santa Fe-based artist Will Wilson (Diné/Navajo) whose work in photography, installation and performance investigates the practice of natural-resource extraction disproportionately affecting Native American peoples of the Southwest. Opening at The University of Texas at Austin’s Visual Arts Center on Jan. 23, 2021, and on view through March 27, 2021, Wilson’s AIR / Survey offers an opportunity to visualize how the destruction of land ultimately leads to the destruction of humankind and non-humankind alike. From the mining of uranium, oil, and coal, to the rerouting of water sources to generate hydroelectric power for major cities in the U.S., resource extractions—their practice and effects—sit at the center of Santa-Fe-based artist Wilson’s work. The Visual Arts Center will present seven of his large-scale photographs of mining sites inside and bordering the Navajo Nation between New Mexico, Utah and Arizona. These photographs engage with the visual traditions and histories of representations of the landscape through survey photography in the U.S. while also considering the relationship between humans and the nonhuman environment. AIR / Survey will also feature a multi-part installation that envisions what an architecture of apocalypse might look like through structures built by its survivors. A new, site-specific structure will reference widespread nuclear weapons testing in the southwestern United States. Wilson transforms the iconic form of a bomb tower, that would typically elevate an atomic bomb moments before detonation, into a harbinger of light and regeneration. Alongside the tower, Wilson will reimagine a skeletal hogan structure used by the artist throughout his Auto Immune Response series. The hogan, a traditional Navajo dwelling used for shelter and/or ceremony, is notably considered a pioneer of energy-efficient homes, and is repurposed in the gallery as a post-apocalyptic shelter. Lastly, the VAC—in concert with local Medicine Woman Marika Alvarado (Lipan Mescalero Apache)—will present an updated version of Wilson’s AIR Lab, a smaller hogan-greenhouse hybrid. Local Indigenous plant life and medicines have been cultivated in the structure’s walls to evoke the potential for growth and renewal, even in a post-apocalyptic world. AIR / Survey as a whole will serve as an incubator for conversations around Indigenous sovereignty, cultural continuity and the effects of ecological destruction on those living in its peripheries. Will Wilson: AIR / Survey is organized by Kaila Schedeen, 2019–2020 curatorial fellow, Visual Arts Center. Special thanks to Marika Alvarado and Evie Carr for their guidance and plant cultivation for AIR Lab. Special thanks to Marika Alvarado and Evie Carr for their guidance and plant cultivation for AIR Lab. Additional thanks to the Center for the Study of the Southwest at Texas State University, San Marcos. This exhibition is supported, in part, by Art Galleries at Black Studies; College of Fine Arts Diversity Committee Guest Artist Initiative; Native American and Indigenous Studies; Division for Diversity and Community Engagement; The Mesoamerica Center; Center for the Study of Modernism; Gwyn Shive, Anita Nordan Lindsay, and Joe & Cherry Gray Professorship in the History of Christianity; African and African Diaspora Studies Department; Department of History; Latino Studies at UT Austin; Department of Psychology; Center for Women’s & Gender Studies; Department of American Studies; Bernard and Audre Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice; and the Theresa Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies. Will Wilson (b. 1969, San Francisco) received a BA from Oberlin College in 1993 and a Dissertation Tracked MFA from The University of New Mexico in 2002. Wilson has had solo exhibitions at the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art, Norman (2017); Texas Tech University School of Art, Lubbock (2015); The Wheelwright Museum (2014-15); Denver Art Museum (2013); the National Museum of the American Indian, New York (2006); and The Heard Museum, Phoenix (2004). He has participated in group exhibitions at Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven (2020); Krannert Art Museum, Champaign (2019-20); National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa (2019-20); Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville (2018-19); Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (2018-19); Seattle Art Museum (2018); Portland Art Museum (2016); and the National Museum of the American Indian, Washington, D.C. (2014). He is the recipient of a number of fellowships and awards, including the Mentor Artist Fellowship from the Native American Arts & Cultures Foundation (2018); the New Mexico Governor’s Excellence in Art Award (2017); the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant in Photography (2016); the Rollin and Mary Ella King Fellowship from the School of Advanced Research (2013); and the Joan Mitchell Foundation Award for Painters and Sculptors (2010). Wilson has been Head of the Photography Program at Santa Fe Community College since 2014."

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Austin, TX 78712
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