Nuclear Aesthetics
Why Nuclear Art Matters
In order for Nuclear Princeton’s information-spreading mission to be comprehensive, it must become comprehensible as something other than information. Art is the best way to synthesize the complexities of the nuclear issue into one picture, or one story, that people can connect to as they cannot to statistics. The works of photographer Patrick Nagatani and novelist Leslie Marmon Silko materialize the consequences of American nuclear development in the Southwest on indigenous communities into comprehensible wholes. From these works we can draw connections between cultural ideas and events that, though always there, have been covered over by the sands of historical neglect. One of our missions is to uncover them by presenting the works of the two artists mentioned above.