AIR LAB

Installation of AIR Lab by Red Butte Garden assistant curator Heidi Simper and greenhouse coordinator Kara Hastings, AIR LAB UMFA curator Whitney Tassie, and Diné artist Will Wilson. (AUTO IMMUNE RESPONSE LABORATORY)

How can we move forward amidst an environmental crisis? Plants may have the answer. Diné artist Will Wilson explores this in partnership with Red Butte Garden in his work AIR Lab (Auto Immune Response Laboratory), featured in the Utah Museum of Fine Arts’ (UMFA) new exhibition Air.

Air, on view through December 11, explores how air connects us to each other and to the planet, through contemporary art by global and local artists. As you enter Air, your eyes are drawn to Wilson’s AIR Lab, a massive steel structure affixed with maps, lights, and various green plants. Since 2005, Wilson has been exploring indigenous food, dye, and pollinator species with this greenhouse postapocalyptic take on the sacred Diné dwelling, the hogan.

In this AIR Lab, Wilson was particularly inspired by phytoremediation (the use of natural plant processes to clean up contaminated environments), as well as Red Butte’s research of the Four Corners Potato. With help from Red Butte’s horticulture director Marita Tewes, conservation director Bruce Pavlik, greenhouse coordinator Kara Hastings, and assistant curator of plant records Heidi M. Simper, several plant species that remove heavy metals and toxins from soil will grow in the middle of UMFA’s gallery. Among them are the sunflower, Indiangrass, needle spikerush, common yarrow, and Mexican mosquito fern, which can help clear uranium, cadmium, arsenic, petroleum hydrocarbons, pesticides, and herbicides.

This collaboration, like the current environmental crisis, required innovative thinking and creative problem-solving, as what is good for plants usually is not good for fine arts, such as pests and prolonged light exposure, not to mention the challenge of plant sourcing during COVID-19.

Today, natural resource extraction, particularly that of uranium, disproportionately affects Diné people by contaminating their land, water, and air. Wilson’s AIR Lab warns us of a toxic future, while providing a sanctuary that symbolizes survival, resourcefulness, and hope. See Air and learn more about Wilson’s work at an art talk at the UMFA on October 7, 2022, from 6-8 pm.