Teaching Gallery / Artists on Colonization, Nuclear Legacies, and Climate Crisis

This exhibition is part of Kõmij Mour Ijin / Our Life Is Here, a series of art installations taking place across UC Berkeley's campus, which considers the legacies of nuclear testing and colonization in relation to climate crises. Featuring a selection of artworks from the BAMPFA Collection, it invites us to recognize our shared responsibility for planetary care. This exhibition invites us to recognize our shared responsibility for planetary care. It is part of Kõmij Mour Ijin / Our Life Is Here, a series of art installations taking place across UC Berkeley's campus, which considers the legacies of nuclear testing and colonization in relation to climate crises. At the heart of this multisite project are the Marshall Islands, a nation of atolls, islands, and islets in the central Pacific Ocean. The Marshallese people have been firsthand witnesses to the devastating impacts of rising sea levels and the more than sixty nuclear tests conducted in the area by the United States between 1946 and 1958. The Marshallese remain resilient stewards of their homeland and vital voices in the global conversation on sustaining all life on Earth. This presentation expands upon these themes with a selection of artworks from the BAMPFA collection. It opens with images printed from aging slides that document US Army and Navy development on Kwajalein Island in the mid-1960s. These images show how land and water have been employed to support military interests. Photographs by Richard Misrach and Mark Ruwedel evoke the deadliness that lingers invisibly in places exposed to radioactivity. Works by Enrique Chagoya, Alma Lavenson, and Patrick Nagatani highlight Indigenous communities displaced and marginalized as a result of colonization. Another group of works explores humanity's interconnections with nature and its resources, through fragility, ambivalence, or wonder. Together these images urge us to heed the message underlying Isabella Kirkland's lush portrait of the rainforest: society will be defined by what we create, as well as what we choose to protect.