Nicola López: Haunted
Where People Aren’t
A new installation by artist Nicola López, Haunted, opened at the Albuquerque Museum, sort of. The large-scale exhibit of collaged, printed and hand-drawn elements that fills the main wall in the entryway to the museum ironically examines the Southwestern landscape haunted by the inescapable presence of humans. On display until at least May 2021, Haunted will hopefully greet visitors soon and assuredly will have a virtual component available on the museum’s website in the coming weeks. (Clarke Condé)
Sunday Aug 30, 2020
Additional Dates:
Albuquerque Museum of Art and History
Albuquerque, NM 87104-1459
US
Phone: 243-7255
Website: Click to Visit
More events at Albuquerque Museum of Art and History
Artist Nicola López will install Haunted in the Albuquerque Museum lobby as part of the annual Visiting Artist program.
Haunted is a site-responsive installation that reflects on how all landscapes are now and forever haunted by our inescapable, human presence.
There is no longer any such thing as “nature” unmarked by humanity. Alongside the forces of geology and time, our human actions have by now impacted every part of the earth’s surface and the reality of all things that inhabit it. Nature as a site untouched by humanity is a ghost that haunts us just as the future is already haunted by the trickle-down and side effects of past, present, and future technologies and the specters of the atrocities we inflict on our environment in the name of progress.
Collaged, printed and hand-drawn elements will be installed directly on the wall to create a hybrid landscape in which geological and human-built features intertwine. This static landscape will be inhabited by moving images projected directly over the wall-mounted collage. Since sunlight pours into the lobby area through large windows adjacent to the exhibition space, the projection will be visible to varying degrees as light conditions shift throughout the day and seasons. Sometimes the projection will be barely visible—and entirely ghostlike—while at other times it will be stronger, the way that phantoms can seem most palpable in spaces of darkness. The projected imagery will include a mix of original documentary and constructed video footage. It will engage ideas of the sublime, the surreal and the all-too-real as it explores how our landscape is now permanently haunted by human impact.
