This exhibition is temporarily closed to the public.
Hot Spots brings together international contemporary artists and art collectives who examine the environmental impact of the production, use, and disposal of radioactive materials by military and commercial industries.
Hot Spots at KAM is co-sponsored by Native American House, the Institute for Sustainability, Energy, and the Environment (iSEE) and the IPRH-Andrew W. Mellon Program in Environmental Humanities.
The exhibition scrutinizes the nuclear industry, including its everyday functions and long-term impact, with an emphasis on issues surrounding radioactive waste. The artists in Hot Spots examine this expansive subject through themes that include rendering the invisible visible, art as a tool of information disclosure and disruption, and developing the complex language necessary to communicate thousands of years into the future.
Artists and collectives featured in Hot Spots include: Naomi Bebo, Jeremy Bolen, Michael Brill and Safdar Abidi, Edward Burtynsky, Erich Berger and Mari Keto, Ludovico Centis, Elizabeth Demaray, Nina Elder, Isao Hashimoto, Adele Henderson, Abbey Hepner, Eve Andrée Laramée, Cynthia Madansky and Angelika Brudniak, Amie Siegel, Robert del Tredici, Claudia X. Valdes, and Will Wilson.
At KAM, Hot Spots is contextualized by longstanding university and community interests in nuclear topics on Native lands and in Illinois. The exhibition’s public programs will include a gallery tour with exhibition curators and a series of visiting artists. The galleries will feature a reading and research area open to all for the duration of the exhibition, including work by the National TLC Service.
Hot Spots: Radioactivity and the Landscape was organized by the University at Buffalo Art Galleries, Buffalo, New York. The exhibition is co-curated by Jennie Lamensdorf and Joan Linder.
Co-curated at KAM by Lilah Leopold, graduate curatorial intern, and Amy L. Powell, Curator of Modern and Contemporary art
