Exposure: Native Art and Political Ecology

This exhibition documents international Indigenous artists’ responses to the impacts of radiation and toxic waste on Native peoples and the environment.

The work of the 36 artists and collectives, most of whom identify as Indigenous, is centered around the impact that nuclear testing, uranium mining, and the subsequent contamination have had on the colonized peoples and their ancestral, unceded lands of present-day Australia, Canada, Greenland, the US, Japan, and the Pacific Islands.

The exhibition presents an interdisciplinary mixture of forms and genres, including sculpture, video installation, photography, collage, glasswork, metalwork, fiber, paintings, and virtual-reality experiences.

The works tell personal stories of illness, struggle, and resilience in the face of corporate willfulness and government complicity.

Exposure was first presented in August 2021 at the Museum of Contemporary Native Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico, a contemporary art venue operated by the Institute of American Indian Arts, and was organized by a curatorial team led by MoCNA’s Chief Curator Manuela Well-Off-Man.

The exhibition and its accompanying hardcover catalogue were made possible with support from the Ford Foundation and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

This will be the first west coast presentation of this poignant exhibition which, following its premiere at MoCNA, will be presented at the Marshall M. Fredericks Sculpture Museum Saginaw, MI and the El Paso Museum of Art TX in addition to the Armory.