Artist Trevor Paglen's work is often described as experimental geography and calls attention to concealed and often alarming aspects of our present time.
Using the latest technologies, Paglen uncovers top-secret infrastructures that define our present. Through photographs, videos, sculptures, books, and interdisciplinary projects, his work informs our perception of the historical moment we live in and fuels our imagination to envision alternative futures.
This work is particularly resonant in...
Artist Trevor Paglen's work is often described as experimental geography and calls attention to concealed and often alarming aspects of our present time.
Using the latest technologies, Paglen uncovers top-secret infrastructures that define our present. Through photographs, videos, sculptures, books, and interdisciplinary projects, his work informs our perception of the historical moment we live in and fuels our imagination to envision alternative futures.
This work is particularly resonant in Utah, where our remote lands hold many secrets, from the NSA Data Center to chemical weapon testing grounds, to nuclear waste storage facilities, to simulated missions to Mars. In 2008 the UMFA acquired four photographs from Paglen’s Limit Telephotography series. Through use of a high-powered telescope Paglen revealed classified military industrial complex sites hidden from civilian eyes by miles of restricted land in the deserts of the western United States.
Paglen's presentation will be held in the UMFA's Katherine W. and Ezekiel R. Dumke Jr. Auditorium. Museum galleries remain temporarily closed for remodeling.
This event is sponsored by XMission, with additional funding from Utah Humanities, the University of Utah Tanner Humanities Center, Communications Institute, University of Utah Communication Department, The English Department at the University of Utah, and the University of Utah Department of Art & Art History. Special thanks to event partner Matt Potolsky, University of Utah professor of English.
The event is part of the Utah Humanities Book Festival and the UMFA's ARTLandish: Land Art, Landscape, and the Environment series, sponsored by the S. J. and Jessie E. Quinney Foundation and presented in partnership with the College of Fine Arts, University of Utah, J. Willard Marriott Library, and Salt Lake City Public Library.
Image credit: Trevor Paglen, "Control Tower/Cactus Flat, NV/11:15 a.m./Distance - 20 miles," 2006, C-print, purchased with funds from the Paul L. and Phyllis C. Wattis Endowment for Works on Paper, UMFA2008.34.2.
www.umfa.utah.edu/artlandish
