heyn 16 July 1945, the first atomic bomb exploded on Earth. This occurred at a test site in Alamogordo, New Mexico, as part of the Manhattan Project, a major US-led initiative to develop nuclear weapons during World War II. And although the project was officially disbanded in 1945, nuclear test sites in the United States continued to emerge throughout the country for decades.
American artist Cara Despen says, “It’s a history that, despite being so full of spectacle, remains hidden.” ,[These tests] Free radicals and isotopes permanently changed this planet. They’ve been testing above ground for years, and not many people know that. ,
In his new solo show Specter, which opened earlier this month at the Bass Museum of Art in Miami Beach and curated by Leilani Lynch, Despen uncovers an obscure history — amid the escalating war between Russia and Ukraine. – has come back to haunt us.
Despite the show’s diminutive size (there are five pieces in total), the cast deftly testifies to the broader collective and individual consequences of a terrifying subject. And perhaps his ability to do so is related to the fact that this is the history he is familiar with.
Despen was born in Utah and works between Salt Lake City and Miami, Florida. His mother’s side of the family grew up in St. George, a city less than 150 miles from the Nevada trial site (which is only 65 miles from Las Vegas). “Being from this field and having grown up in this age of testing, the development of the nuclear arsenal and the collateral damage that comes with it is something that is always on my mind,” she explains.
At first sight, iodine-131, a gecko green cast made of LED lights from gypsum concrete backlit, appears to be only a 3D rendering of a mountainous terrain that captures the viewer’s attention because of its beauty. A closer look reveals it to be a detailed casting of the topography of Yucca Flat, a major nuclear test area within the Nevada test site, where several craters of nuclear explosions are visible from space. Despen says it retrieved the image using Google Earth and chose to focus on this section of the test site as it “began to communicate the magnitude of what happened”.
On a large screen, near Iodine-131, House of Cards (2022) presents unclassified black and white footage of test sites, bomb craters and mushroom clouds, with the words “the end” on films to explain it clearly. has been accused. test results. In one shot, a crater at a nuclear test site is layered with a picture of a football field showing the bomb’s destruction potential.
In Specter, Despen also presents works featuring mass-produced Depression-era consumer glass dishware and antiques that emit a strikingly bizarre glow under UV illumination due to the presence of uranium oxide in their composition. The chemical was widely banned in the US in 1942 upon the emergence of the Manhattan Project, which redirected all uranium to bomb production. With artifacts that include fluorescent glassware entitled Under the Rainbow and Will Bloom as the Desert Rose, Despen hopes to bring the topic of domesticity to the fore of negotiations on nuclear weapons development.
“I think the cuisine speaks to the people living in the Fallout area. They were regular families, just living their lives,” she said. “For decades, no one believed the people in that area—including From some I descended – no one believed they were getting sick or dying, or that they were seeing burns on their animals, or that their milk was irradiated. For decades, he was gaslighted by the government. and the same [happened] with uranium miners.”
Despen’s “trick,” as she describes it, is her ability to capitalize on duality and present difficult subjects through a mesmerizing lens. She captivates her audience through mesmerizing forms and colors, and she reveals the inevitable and gut-wrenching realities once they are under that spell.
This ability is best evidenced in Spector’s extraordinary piece, The Test of Faith (2022), a cinematic three-channel digital video installation that transports viewers into an otherworldly setting for a little over three-and-a-half minutes. Created using declassified footage from the atomic bomb tests at the Nevada test site, Despen intervened with bright colors and changes, resulting in a set of soul-stirring Rorschach tests, scenes from the work in the Mormon psalm of Love. is raised very high by a chilling rendition of K. Another one, which emerges as giant mushroom clouds glowing in the background, morphs into hundreds of shadowy forms. The hymn’s inclusion, Despen explains, was a call for “united patriotism” by the military not only for the Mormon settlers in the Fallout region but for the country as a whole.
“Nuclear war is always looming in the background,” Despen said. “It’s not on the top of our minds until the conflict with Russia and Ukraine happens. But the truth is, we’re always stuck in this quagmire.” With Spector, he hopes that visitors will begin to understand the gruesome effects of developing a nuclear arsenal and the brutal collateral damage that comes with testing. “If I can tell even a fraction of it through this backchannel of art, I feel like I have done my job to uncover this history,” she says.