Not In My Back Yard

The Destruction of Local Environments for So-Called Progress

A Curatorial Proposal

Shasta Crawford
Sotheby’s Institute of Art

Curatorial Narrative

Not In My Back Yard: The Destruction of Local Environments for So-Called Progress
Not In My Back Yard (NIMBY): a person who objects to the sitting of something perceived as unpleasant or potentially dangerous in their own neighborhood, such as a landfill or hazardous waste facility.

The exhibition proposes to open a dialogue about the intersection of art and activism, and to consider the convergence of politics and aesthetics in the American Southwest. In the last year we have witnessed the rise of a union between native indigenous peoples and citizens from around the world in a unification of the defense of land rights and environmental protection. Despite the victory at Standing Rock, among previous similar movements, neoliberalism and globalization remain major issues for local and global environmental health.

The artists included in this exhibition span various national origins and artistic mediums. The goal of the exhibition is to present a variety of artistic approaches that communicate an ecosystem of ideas that can demonstrate the necessity of a change away from the ecocide of corporate globalization and environmental destruction in the American Southwest. Through the experiences of the artists in this exhibition we are given a look at what it means to have these catastrophes occur in your own back yard, and how it effects the land that we live on, the air that we breathe, the water that we drink, the places that are sacred to us, and the quality of life that each individual strives to achieve. Not In My Back Yard, then, becomes an accessible tool to raise awareness and to highlight the obstacles of our changing landscape.

The conception of this exhibition began with a desire to address the exploitation of the earth’s resources, with a focus on the Southwest region of the United States. Through the exploration of these issues it came to be about so much more. It became aware to me that the presence of Native American artists in not only the contemporary art world but also in the broader context of cultural exchange, is minimal at best. Contemporary Indigenous artists are linked through their shared modes of representation and artistic practice, which is informed by the land and their relationship to it. [1] Other uniting themes are their shared histories of colonization and issues of identity.[2] For Diné artist Will Wilson, they provide a cultural location for the construction of alternative readings of history told from the standpoint of the oppressed, the disinherited, or those who are opened to seeing the world from this perspective.[3] It is through these voices, by bringing forward those existing in the margins of our society, that I believe we can better understand the major problems facing our social, cultural and physical environments.

[1] Will Wilson, “PREFACE: Some Practical Reflections,” New
Native Art Criticism: Manifestations, 17.
[2] Ibid, 17.
[3] Ibid, 16.

 WhiteBox presents

Not In My Back Yard
EXHIBITION MAY 5 – MAY 26, 2017
OPENING RECEPTION MAY 4 | 6-9PM

Curated by Shasta Crawford

Not In My Back Yard (NIMBY): a person who objects to the sitting of something perceived as unpleasant or potentially dangerous in their own neighborhood, such as a landfill or hazardous waste facility.

The exhibition proposes to open a dialogue about the intersection of art and activism, and to consider the convergence of politics and aesthetics in the American Southwest. In the last year we have witnessed the rise of a union between native indigenous peoples and citizens from around the world in a unification of the defense of land rights and environmental protection. Despite the victory at Standing Rock, among previous similar movements, neoliberalism and globalization remain major issues for local and global environmental health.

The artists included in this exhibition span various national origins and artistic mediums. The goal of the exhibition is to present a variety of artistic approaches that communicate an ecosystem of ideas that can demonstrate the necessity of a change away from the ecocide of corporate globalization and environmental destruction in the American Southwest. Through the experiences of the artists in this exhibition we are given a look at what it means to have these catastrophes occur in your own back yard, and how it effects the land that we live on, the air that we breathe, the water that we drink, the places that are sacred to us, and the quality of life that each individual strives to achieve. Not In My Back Yard, then, becomes an accessible tool to raise awareness and to highlight the obstacles of our changing landscape.

We are welcoming ideas, communities, artists, and activists until the 26TH of May.

Artists Wanda Hammerbeck, Patrick Nagatani, Postcommodity, Anna Tsouhlarakis, William Wilson

PUBLIC PROGRAMS
MAY 13 @ 7PM
Artist Talk
POSTCOMMODITY: Raven Chacon, Cristóbal Martínez, Kade L. Twist

MAY 20 @ 7pm
Artist Talk
Will Wilson

WhiteBox is a non-profit art space that serves as a platform for contemporary artists to develop and showcase new site-specific work, and is a laboratory for unique commissions, exhibitions, special events, salon series, and arts education programs.

WhiteBox offers free and diverse programs for the surrounding communities including Chinatown, the Lower East Side, and international cultural tourism to experience an artists’ work in a meaningful manner.

WhiteBox Vision
Through site-specific exhibitions, performances, screenings, readings, lectures, and panel discussions, WhiteBox provides the opportunity to experience an artist’s practice in a meaningful way to the surrounding communities of Chinatown, the Lower East Side, and cultural tourism. It is WhiteBox’s artistic vision to provide artists with sustained exposure, and create the environment for more in-depth interaction between audiences and artists practices. As a non-profit art space, WhiteBox aims to be a space for invention. It achieves this by inviting emerging and established artists to respond to its exhibition space with interventions, performances, and developing long-term programming that allows them to develop projects and engage with audiences.

WhiteBox History
WhiteBox was founded in 1998. Within its first two years, WhiteBox was nominated for “Best Group Show” by the International Art Critics Association for Plural Speech and for a survey of Viennese Actionists, Günter Brus and Hermann Nitsch. During its first decade, WhiteBox built a reputation for producing thought-provoking exhibitions and initiatives that fostered engagement among a broad audience, including neighborhood low-income housing communities and the Bayview Women’s Prison.

The organization of WhiteBox is a pivotal transitional stage; building upon its sixteen year legacy of presenting contemporary art in the spirit of the avant-garde, WhiteBox is expanding its mission to incorporate an annual salon series, increasing sustained support and exposure for artists.

Venue
WhiteBox
329 Broome St
New York, NY
p:212.714.2347
info@whitebox.org

WORKS LIST

WANDA HAMMERBECK

PATRICK NAGATANI

POSTCOMMODITY

ANNA TSOULARAKIS

WILL WILSON

CATALOGUE ESSAY

“It is a distinctive trait of our culture that in addition to such inadvertent ruins and remnants that may survive as a matter of chance, we deliberately endeavor to conserve a certain portion of our culture, specifically in order that the future might see us much as we see ourselves. And this is because we try to see our own culture from a historical perspective as we will be seen by future generations looking back.”
– Venice Charter (1964)

“We reaffirm our responsibility to speak for the protection and enhancement of the well-being of Mother Earth, nature and future generations of our Indigenous Peoples and all humanity and life. We, Indigenous Peoples from all regions of the world have defended our Mother Earth from the aggression of unsustainable development and the overexploitation of our natural resources by mining, logging, mega-dams, exploration and extraction of petroleum.” –
Kari-Oca II Earth Summit Declaration (2012)

The International Charter for the Conservation and Restoration of Monuments and Sites, also known as the Venice Charter of 1964, acknowledged the importance of conserving historic monuments of generations of people, insisting that it is our duty to hand them on in the full richness of their authenticity.[1]  In Article 1 the charter defines the concept of a historic monument not only as a single architectural work, but also the urban or rural setting in which is found the evidence of a particular civilization.[2]  This safeguarding of architectural heritage calls to mind similar issues occurring today regarding the environment, as we will be passing our landscape to the next generation. However, our landscape is weak and sick, and by the time this handoff occurs, it will be even more so.  The devastation we have inflicted upon the earth affects the entire population, in one way or another. Native indigenous peoples around the world have experienced a more personal struggle, as the land that they live off of, the sacred integrity of the earth and its resources, are diminished, polluted and ultimately destroyed. In 2012 the Indigenous Peoples of Mother Earth assembled in Rio de Janeiro to participate in the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development. Their declaration intends to acknowledge both global and local environmental devastation as well as propose new possible solutions. Art historian and cultural critic TJ Demos argues that attempts at reversing this situation can be understood as a decolonizing of nature, and proposes the question: What role exists for artists and activists, increasingly brought together under these emergency circumstances?[3] This question becomes ever more pressing as we realize that much of the land used for mining and other industrial interests, especially in the Southwest, are considered sacred sites, and home to large communities of peaceful lovers of the land.

According to the oxford dictionary the term not in my back yard, or NIMBY, is defined as a person who objects to the sitting of something perceived as unpleasant or potentially dangerous in their own neighborhood, such as a landfill or hazardous waste facility. Author, curator, and activist Lucy R. Lippard argues that at best, NIMBY means “resistance to the destruction of local environments for so-called progress… and at worst it means keep poor people and people of color in the places that are being destroyed by nuclear waste dumps and other hazardous matter.”[4]  In a recent publication of hers, Lippard travels through decades of environmental issues and miles of devastated land in the North and Southwest regions of the United States affected by neoliberalism and globalization. Throughout her journey she investigates politics and land use and explores how artists are responding to the destruction of the land, air, and water located right in their very own backyards.  The proposed exhibition Not In My Back Yard explores these issues through artists who either originate from or engage with issues surrounding the local environment  of the American Southwest. The artists in this exhibition engage with local issues, which are in dialogue with the much bigger issue of global climate change. As Rachel Carson reminds us in the classic that launched the environmental movement, Silent Spring (1962), “seldom if ever does Nature operate in closed and separate compartments.”[5]  Local environmental concerns are one in the same as global environmental concerns. As the contemporary ecocide of corporate globalization moves forward, so does the rapid decline of the availability of clean drinking water, air, and unscathed earth.  

In the introduction essay for Frank’s photography book, Jack Kerouac writes that the faces in the pictures say “This is the way we are in real life and if you don’t like it I don’t know anything about it ‘cause I’m living my own life my way and may God bless us all, mebbe’… if we deserve it...”[7]  The faces he refers to are the faces of “the Americans” present throughout the series. Hailed as a truthful documentation of American culture at the time, this collection of individuals in fact represents only a portion of “Americans.”  Absent are the communities of people who are arguably more “American” than a misplaced cowboy “rolling butt” outside of Times Square. Not surprisingly, these communities of people are nowhere to be found in Frank’s compilation. What “America,” then is being portrayed? One ignorant to its surroundings… stubborn and self-serving, as Kerouac seems to imply? And, what is this “American”-ness that was so identifiable at the time?  Frank’s America is part of a larger problem in contemporary culture.  Diné artist Will Wilson acknowledges that Native Peoples are time and again omitted from broader cultural exchange.[8]  Contemporary Indigenous artists are linked through their shared modes of representation and artistic practice, which is informed by the land and their relationship to it.[9]  Other uniting themes are their shared histories of colonization and issues of identity.[10]  The lack of Indigenous representation in the contemporary art world is unsettling. For Wilson, they provide a cultural location for the construction of alternative readings of history told from the standpoint of the oppressed, the disinherited, or those who are opened to seeing the world from this
perspective.[11]

The American Southwest has been home to countless oil and gas corporations, who since the 1940s have exploited the land for massive profit.  Local surface and ground waters have been harshly depleted and poisoned, clean air quality significantly diminished, and the surface of the earth violated and scarred.  In 1962 Rachel Carson wrote about the harmful effects of pesticides, as they poison our environment and ultimately our bodies.  The success of her exposé ultimately led to the first piece of legislation passed banning the use of DDT and igniting revolutionary changes in the laws affecting our air, land and water.  However powerful and well received Carson’s message was, the government has remained aligned with the major oil and gas corporations.  The exploitation of land, property and natural resources continues to this day.  Author William deBuys makes a compelling case in A Great Aridness: Climate Change and the Future of the American Southwest (2011) as he paints a picture of what the region might look like in the future if conditions remain as they are today.  As an arid region already vulnerable to massive long-term draughts, and coupled with recent population growth and a consistent colonizing of nature, the Southwest according to deBuys would be the first to feel the devastating effects of climate change.

The story of the west, according to deBuys, is essentially a story about water, and its lack.[12]  The aridness of the American Southwest that deBuys describes is echoed in the photographs of Wanda Hammerbeck. Born in Lincoln, Nebraska in 1945, Hammerbeck is all too familiar with the flat plains of the American landscape. Although she is not native to the Southwest, she has resided in the region for over twenty years. In contrast to traditional landscape photography which is intended to promote and preserve a wilderness ideal, her images utilize the desert landscape as a tool for communicating an unsettling series of unanswered questions about land use and the region's water issues.[13]

William Wilson (Diné/Bilagaana) is a similar artist whose artistic practices are also aligned with water, land and air issues within Southwest region. Wilson spent his formative years living on the Navajo Reservation as a child, an experience that strongly informs his body of work. He works mainly in photography and installation, creating a deliberate counternarrative to romantic visions of Native people living in an unchangeable past.[19]  In 2005 Wilson began a series entitled Auto Immune Response (AIR), which takes as its subject the quixotic relationship between a post-apocalyptic Diné (Navajo) man and the devastatingly beautiful, but toxic environment he inhabits.[20]  According to the artist, the series is “an allegorical investigation of the extraordinarily rapid transformation of Indigenous lifeways, the dis-ease it has caused, and strategies of response that enable cultural survival.”[21]  In this series, Wilson plays with apocalyptic notions of utopia/dystopia by constructing an exhilarating and post-apocalyptic
narrative.”[22]

Wilson’s photographs are alarmingly reflective of the air and water quality of the region, demonstrating the toxicity of both.  In a compelling image of the artist wearing a gas mask, he is shown facing the Grand Canyon in both standing and seated positions. As his senses are restricted, the figure is emblematic of a citizen of the world, whose natural right to enjoy the abundant beauty found in nature is now limited. Wilson points to the limits set on experiences such as these, as the poisoned air establishes a severe boundary between man and the land he comes from. Calling to mind paintings from the Industrial Revolution era in which agrarian, rural societies became industrial and urban, Wilson aligns himself with a similar desire to explore the wondrous bounds of the landscape, full of an innate need to reconnect and realign. This time, however, man has already dominated the environment, and has tainted its many lifegiving properties. Man is no longer free to unabashedly bask in its sublimity.

According to Kathleen Ash-Milby, curator at the Smithsonian, the “panoramic vistas created by Wilson’s intricate photomontages show a world that is both breathtakingly beautiful and, as the ominous gas masks suggest, poisonous.”23

According to Demos the term political ecology “identifies multiple competing approaches to the environment, agency and social composition.” 36 Anna Tsouhlarakis contributes to the discussion of political ecology and the colonization of nature, native culture and the land. In works such as Edges of the Ephemeral (2012), Tsouhlarakis explores Navajo narratives of the future worlds while at the same time reminding that Native Peoples continue to live on their Indigenous homelands amidst a settler nation state.

Intended as an environmentally oriented work under the theme of Hózhó Náhásdlíí – or, Harmony in the Making – the installation is a spiral structure reminiscent of early American pioneer settlements composed of aluminum signage, reclaimed wood, and found objects, and combines “a quasi-scientific survey with the very real role of oral traditions.”37 In a review of the installation in 2012 at the Museum of Contemporary Native Arts in Santa Fe by Lucy Madeline, she claims that it seems to inquire about the nature of our future, if there even is one.[38]

In a similar mediation on the traditions of indigenous cultures, the interdisciplinary arts collective Postcommodity positions itself as an active communicator of contemporary post-colonial tensions driven by globalization and neoliberalism.[41]  Their focus is on indigenous lands and cultures, especially in the Southwest – New Mexico, Arizona and Oklahoma. Their mission is multifaceted and aims to connect Indigenous narratives of cultural self-determination with the broader public sphere.[42] The collective is comprised of Raven Chaco (Navajo), Kade L. Twist (Cherokee), and Cristóbal Martínez who identifies himself as Mestizo and ‘Alcaldeño’. All three contribute something different to each project they pursue. Chacon is a chamber musician and a composer of “new music” or “Navajo noise,” Martínez a computer scientist and media systems engineer, and Twist the theoretician of the group, often focusing on the figuration of space and immersive environments.  Needless to say, sound,
music and video play a major role in their work. In a powerful installation titled Worldview Manipulation Therapy (2009), Postcommodity sets the stage of a tribal ceremony, drawing upon its ephemeral, transformative, and esoteric aspects.[43]

Two screens project images which conjure fire and ice, while a circular floor piece based on broken pottery designs refers to the sandpaintings in Navajo healing practices.[44]  The sandpainting is composed of salt, rock and coal and as Lippard states, “argues for the conservation of the indigenous landscape that hold so many secrets and mean so much to their original inhabitants.” 45 She explains that salt stands for migration pathways threatened by development, as are so many sacred sites in the West, and coal stands for the destructive extraction of fossil fuels taking place on tribal lands, often without popular consent.46 The rock comes from the dead Gila River, which has been run dry by the demands of unsustainable population-growth.47 Another element to this exhibition is a tent-like structure that is painted black with coal and dust and emits a blue light. This, according to Lippard, addresses the wrenching misuse of sacred sweat lodges by New Age gurus and entrepreneurs.48 Sound is also major part of the installation. As the artists describe, the centerpiece is a “sculptural graphic score that articulates the sonic and performance accompanying the installation through traditional tribal geometries.”49

[1] Venice Charter, 1964.
[2]Venice Charter, 1964.
[3] T.J. Demos, Decolonizing Nature: Contemporary Art and the Politics of Ecology, (Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2016), 16.
[4] Lucy R. Lippard, Undermining: A Wild Ride Through Land Use, Politics, and Art in the Changing West (New York: the New Press, 2013), 104.
[5] Rachel L. Carson, Silent Spring (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2002), 42.
[6] Stuart Alexander, et al., Looking In: Robert Frank’s the Americans (Washington D.C: National Gallery of Art, 2009), xix.
[7] Robert Frank, The Americans. New York: 3rd SCALO ed. (New York, Washington: SCALO Publishers in association with the National Gallery of Art, 1998), 6.
[8] Will Wilson, “PREFACE: Some Practical Reflections,” in New Native Art Criticism: Manifestations (Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, Santa Fe, NM: 2011), 16.
[9] Ibid, 17.
[10] Ibid, 17.
[11] Ibid, 16.
[12] William DeBuys, A Great Aridness: Climate Change and the Future of the American Southwest (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 310.
[13] Thomas W. Southall, “Where We Stand” in Altered Landscapes, (Reno; Las Vegas: Nevada Museum of Art in Association with University of Nevada), 48.
[14] Marilyn Cooper, Indian Wells, Katherine Plake Hough, and Palm Springs Art Museum, Contemporary Desert Photography : The Other Side of Paradise (Palm Springs, Calif. : Seattle, Wash.: Palm Springs Art Museum ; Distributed by the U of Washington, 2005), 26.
[15] William DeBuys, A Great Aridness: Climate Change and the Future of the American Southwest, 310.
[16] Ibid, 310.
[17] Ibid, 9.
[18] Thomas W. Southall, “Where We Stand,” 49.
[19] Kathleen Ash-Milby, William Wilson / Virgil Ortiz. Exhibition brochure. National Museum of the American Indian, 2006.
[20] “About”, William Wilson website, (http://willwilson.photoshelter.com/about), Accessed November 20, 2016.
[21] Ibid.
[22] Dylan A.T. Miner, “Will Wilson,” in New Native Art Criticism: Manifestations (Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, Santa Fe, NM: 2011), 193.
[23] Kathleen Ash-Milby, Auto Immune Response, (Smithsonian Institute, New York: 2008 (http://www.nmai.si.edu/exhibitions/pdf/wilsonortiz_ proschure.pdf), Accessed November 20, 2016.
[24] T.J. Demos, Decolonizing Nature: Contemporary Art and the Politics of Ecology, (Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2016), 14.
[25] T.J. Demos, Decolonizing Nature: Contemporary Art and the Politics of Ecology, 12 & 17.
[26] T.J. Demos, Decolonizing Nature: Contemporary Art and the Politics of Ecology, 12.
[27] Lucy R. Lippard, Undermining: A Wild Ride Through Land Use, Politics, and Art in the Changing West, 110.
[28] Ibid, 111.
[29] Ibid, pp. 111-112.
[30] Patrick Nagatani and Eugenia Parry Janis, Nuclear Enchantment (Albuquerque, N.M.: University of New Mexico Press, 1991), 5.
[31] Ruthie Macha, “America’s Nuclear legacy: A Topography of Ambivalence,” Desire for Magic : Patrick Nagatani 1978-2008 (Albuquerque, N,M.: U of New Mexico Art Museum, 2010) 40.
[32] Thomas F. Barrow, Stuart Ashman, and Kristin Barendsen, Photography : New Mexico (Albuquerque, N.M.: Fresco Fine Art Publications, 2008) 5.
[33] Ruthie Macha, “America’s Nuclear legacy: A Topography of Ambivalence,” 40.
[34] Lucy R. Lippard, Undermining: A Wild Ride Through Land Use, Politics, and Art in the Changing West, 111.
[35] Patrick Nagatani and Eugenia Parry Janis, Nuclear Enchantment, 5.
[36] T.J. Demos, Contemporary Art and the Politics of Ecology, Third Text, 2013 (27:1,19,DOI:10.1080/09528822.2013.753187(http://dx.doi.org/10.108 0/09528822.2013.753187), Accessed November 18, 2016, 2.
[37]Lucy R. Lippard, Undermining: A Wild Ride Through Land Use, Politics, and Art in the Changing West, 78.
[38] Lucy Madeline, “Blinding with Sparkle – Anna Tsouhlarakis Questions Our Future,” Adobe Airstream, June 2012, (http://adobeairstream.com/art/blinding-with-sparkle-annatsouhlarakis- questions-our-future/),
        Accessed November 20, 2016.
[39] Lucy Madeline, “Blinding with Sparkle – Anna Tsouhlarakis Questions Our Future.”
[40] Lucy Madeline, “Blinding with Sparkle – Anna Tsouhlarakis Questions Our Future.”
[41] Postcommodity, “Worldview Manipulation Therapy,” (http://postcommodity.com/WorldviewManipulationTherapy.html), Accessed November 20, 2016.
[42] Postcommodity, “About,”http://postcommodity.com/About.html (Accessed November 20, 2016).
[43] Postcommodity, (http://postcommodity.com/WorldviewManipulationTherapy.html), Accessed November 20, 2016.
[44] Lucy R. Lippard, “Postmodern Ambush.” Afterall: A Journal of Art, Context and Enquiry, 39 (London, Afterall: Summer 2015), 20.
[45] Lucy R. Lippard, “Postmodern Ambush,” Afterall, 20.
[46] Lucy R. Lippard, “Postmodern Ambush,” Afterall, 20-21.
[47] Postcommodity, “Worldview Manipulation.”
[48] Lucy R. Lippard, “Postmodern Ambush,” Afterall, 20.
[49] Postcommodity, “Worldview Manipulation.”
[50] Lucy R. Lippard, “Postmodern Ambush,” Afterall, 19.
[51] Lucy R. Lippard, “Postmodern Ambush,” Afterall, 17.
[52] Will Wilson, “PREFACE: Some Practical Reflections,” New Native Art Criticism: Manifestations, 17.

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