Eve Larameé sits on the ground, duct taping black power cords along the edge of the wall. The cords crawl up the wall to a row of small, round objects resembling handless clocks with strange images where the clock faces should be. In the center of the room sits an ominous silver cage, and behind me, a briefcase emits a droning noise and wavering light. The entire experience is rather disorienting, but it worsens when Larameé gets up and turns off the lights. The round objects mounted on the wall glow brightly, and as we walk past the cage it begins to shake and rattle frantically (the result of a motion sensor, as I am later told). With the lights off, the exhibition room transforms into an eerie place with the feel of an abandoned, haunted laboratory.

Larameé’s exhibit on the effects of uranium mining in the Southwestern United States is just one of many events going on during the “Evolving Arts Festival,” which commemorates Charles Darwin’s 200th birthday on Feb. 12. Dance performances, play readings and other fine arts events will occur on campus all throughout the month of February, exploring the theme of evolution. When I asked Larameé how the silver cage in the center of the room pertains to the theme, she responded, “I try to create an overall environment that creates meaning in a holistic, and even problematic way … I’m orchestrating all of these fragments that in my mind connote evolution and a problem related to evolution, but I’m leaving it to the viewer to synthesize, to put the pieces together.”

As she took me around the room discussing her work, the pieces began to fall into place. Larameé used three main sources of images for her art: images of the human genome affected by cancer, which make star patterns; baskets made by the Pueblo people, such as the Navajo and Zuni; and lastly, microorganism remediators, a fancy name for bacteria used to clean up radiation sites. These images, placed within the glowing clock-like wall mounts, tell the story of the extensive uranium mining that took place in the latter half of the 20th century. Indigenous peoples were employed for uranium extraction, and while working in the mines were exposed to significant amounts of radiation. Subsequent studies found increased incidences of certain kinds of cancer within this population. Deinococcus radiodurans – the helpful bacteria mentioned earlier – remediates some of the harmful effects of lingering radiation. These images, both on their own and superimposed on each other, form bright geometric and anamorphic shapes. The opposing wall features bleak photos of Grants, N.M., one of the areas heavily affected by uranium mining.

Continuing the multi-sensory experience, Larameé flipped  on a projector and ethereal female voices filled the room as a huge image of a cell appeared on the wall. Slowly, a streak began to form behind the cell, which Larameé described as a comet tail. Appropriately called the “comet assay pattern,” this phenomenon occurs when a cell’s DNA is damaged and genetic material begins to fall off of the cell. The particular cell on the wall was one that had been bombarded with a toxic by-product of uranium.

“My installation is looking at an environmental problem in relation to the evolutionary process,” said Larameé, “It’s beyond me to solve this problem, but as an artist, I can give visual form to it.”

The projection of the degrading cell is a provocative and disturbing “visual form” of radioactivity, especially when one considers that many people in Grants built their houses out of the rubble left behind from the uranium mills. 

Larameé hopes that her exhibit will cause the viewer to consider the effects of our “atomic legacy” on human beings and on future generations.

— Contact Kelsey Harper.