Description
“NEW MEXICO: Land of Bombardment” (acrylic paint, oil/wax crayon, and pencil on heavy watercolor paper) counters the state’s celebrated identity as the “Land of Enchantment” with its enduring nuclear legacy. New Mexico’s extraordinary landscape, cultural depth, and creative magnetism coexist with its central role in the birth and continued development of the U.S. nuclear-weapons complex. The 1945 Trinity Test—the first detonation of a nuclear weapon—initiated an era whose radioactive fallout affected communities across the state, particularly residents living downwind, while institutions such as Los Alamos and Sandia have sustained New Mexico’s long relationship with nuclear research and weapons production. Renaming the state “Land of Bombardment,” the work asks viewers to reckon with the environmental, public-health, and moral consequences that remain beneath its radiant skies.
