Art Talk: Will Wilson

Friday, October 7 | 6:30–8 pm |
Utah Museum of Fine Arts
Also available via live-stream (Link will be provided day of!)

Diné artist Will Wilson will discuss his ongoing photographic survey of the people, land, and remediation efforts connected to over 500 abandoned uranium mines that are contaminating the Navajo Nation, where Wilson grew up and where his family lives today. Historically, Euro-American landscape photography has represented the American West as vast, uninhabited, and full of resources for capital gain, but Wilson’s photography counters that problematic myth and, in his words, empowers “Diné people to re-story their narrative.”

See his work on view now in Air. In addition to his photographs, Wilson has installed his AIR Lab, a post-apocalyptic take on the sacred Diné dwelling, the hogan. Wilson has collaborated with University of Utah’s Red Butte Gardens to turn his steel hogan into a greenhouse for growing the Four Corners potato and plant species that remove heavy metals and toxins from the soil.