A THOUSAND BEAUTIFUL LIES exhibition review
A Thousand Beautiful Lies features artwork by acclaimed artists Shayla Blatchford, Abbey Hepner, Bootsy Holler, Kei Ito, Patrick Nagatani, and Will Wilson.
This exhibition investigates the nuclear environmental and humanitarian legacy by exploring the agency and place of those directly affected by lasting impacts. Each artist explores issues of atomic legacy through lived experience and personal biographies affected by atomic legacies.
Review by Paloma Jimenez DARIA
Bootsy Holler also favors a targeted application of color in a collection of multimedia works from the Contaminated project, which focuses on the lasting impacts of the Hanford Nuclear site. Holler explains, “Contaminated is my experience growing up in this highly charged and secretive town and its impact on the community, people, environment, water, and land. Each unique piece is hand-built from family and friends' stories, pictures, and declassified documents.”
Photos of smiling individuals from the town turn dystopian once you examine the violent placement of layered incisions into the paper. Dark circles of radiation illness overtake the image of a couple in Dusty & Lou - Stomach Cancer, 2023. The voids in the work threaten to swallow the memory whole. Even more disquieting is the piece Jack - Classified, 2016-2021. Tender-faced, looking off into the distance, the young man’s lips are sewn shut with a single button. His cause of death remains unknown to all but the government.
From aerial perspectives of nuclear waste scarring the land to human lives cut short by cancer, A Thousand Beautiful Lies isn’t optimistic, and it doesn’t have to be. It’s haunting, informative, and offers space to hold complex feelings. We often turn to art to celebrate life, but also to mourn the loss of it. With this work, we are able to access information censored by the media, to understand the world from another person’s perspective, and to imagine something greater and more beautiful than the current reality.
Center for Creativity
200 Mathews Street, Fort Collins, CO 80524
October 30-November 23, 2024
Hamidah Glasgow curated a Thousand Beautiful Lies.
Previous Related Programming:
Richland Documentary Screening on February 1, 2024, at the Lyric Cinema and presented in partnership with the ACT Human Rights Film Festival. More Information here.
Bootsy Holler's artist talk on Zoom on February 7th at 5 pm MT. Free, More Information here.
More related programming is to be announced.
The National Endowment for the Arts and Fort Fund partially funds this exhibition and related programming.