Will Wilson, "Connecting the Dots for a Just Transition: Nuclear Colonialism on Dinétah"

Speaker Will Wilson shares a presentation titled "Connecting the Dots for a Just Transition: Nuclear Colonialism on Dinétah" from the 2-day virtual symposium "Global Photography: Temporalities and Spatial Logics."

My presentation will focus on the Connecting the Dots project proposal. The project raises awareness about a critical opportunity for a Just Transition on the Navajo Nation as it addresses remediation following uranium extraction that has poisoned the land and impoverished a people. I will create an unconventional photographic survey using drone-based, aerial and App- activated photography to help Diné people re-story our narrative. My project will present a portrait of environmental and social poverty, but more importantly, shape a platform for voices of resilience, wisdom, and vision for a transition to restorative systems of economy and memory making. This survey will advocate for a new approach to environmental remediation on the Navajo Nation, with the aim of collaborating with Diné scientists, documentarians, and artists.

In this project I will blend historic photographic process with augmented reality and drone-based aerial photography to reinscribe Indigenous voice and agency onto what has historically been a technology of speculation, surveillance and waste landing. Guided by an ethics-based aesthetics, restorative and new media accounts of the Land and People will inspire awareness, activism, and change.

The project asks, “How can we martial Indigenous Ways of Knowing — our deep understanding of the intersection of Land, People, and the natural world — with a critical knowledge of the machinations of colonization? Can a New Indigenous Cartography reveal a path to decolonization?”

Will Wilson’s art projects center around the continuation and transformation ofcustomary indigenous cultural practice. He is a Diné photographer and trans-customary artist who spent his formative years living on the Navajo Nation. Wilson studied photography, sculpture, and art history at the University of New Mexico (MFA, Photography, 2002) and Oberlin College (BA, Studio Art and Art History, 1993). In 2007, Wilson won the Native American Fine Art Fellowship from the Eiteljorg Museum, in 2010 the Joan Mitchell Foundation Award for Sculpture, and in 2016 the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant for Photography. Wilson has held visiting professorships at the Institute of American Indian Arts (1999-2000), Oberlin College (2000-01), and the University of Arizona (2006-08). In 2017, Wilson received the NM Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts. His work is exhibited and collected internationally. Wilson is program Head of Photography at Santa Fe Community College.

https://willwilson.photoshelter.com