Climate Change and Natural Resources Take Center Stage

SALT LAKE CITY, Feb. 1, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — The Utah Museum of Contemporary Art (UMOCA) is excited to announce the opening of six new exhibitions—including As the Lake Fades featuring the work of 15 local, national, and international artists exploring drought, climate change, and the environmental crisis facing Utahns. Every exhibition focuses on our natural world from The Great Salt Lake and biocrust to public lands and the American West landscape.

As the Lake Fades, through June 1, 2024: As the Lake Fades looks at how people have been, and continue to be, connected to the Great Salt Lake as well as its importance to the past, present, and future residents of the Salt Lake Valley. The exhibition aims to illustrate how artists, art collectives, and residents of the region can work together to understand and mitigate human-caused environmental disasters while finding equitable solutions.

Everything Is Collective: Expected Image, through April 27, 2024: Everything Is Collective explores how the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) uses visuality, photography, and images as a crucial part of its land management policies. This modular project features a little-known Visual Resource Management System which is used to determine the “scenic or visual values of American public lands.” The goal is to challenge common perceptions around nature and land use.

Diane Tuft: Entropy, through April 27, 2024: Diane Tuft’s photographs explore the destructive impact climate change has had on our region: specifically, the demise of the Great Salt Lake. You’ll see the impact of climate change expressed as saturated colors, visible cracks, and clear textures.

Paul Kos: Oracles, through June 29, 2024: Continuing themes from his broader practice—which includes sculpture, performance, site-specific, and public works—the videos selected here show conceptual artist Paul Kos working to conjure or uncover meaning from the landscape and natural world.

Jorge Rojas & Dr. Sasha Reed: The Biocrust Project, through June 1, 2024: As the Canyonlands Research Center’s first Artist in Residency project, Jorge Rojas and Dr. Sasha Reed have created an audiovisual art installation that offers an educational and immersive encounter with biocrust—also known as the desert’s skin.

Jerrin Wagstaff: American Landscapes, through March 30, 2024: In American Landscapes UMOCA Artist-in-Residence Jerrin Wagstaff explores how the landscape of the American West shapes ideas about American identity today.

SOURCE Utah Museum of Contemporary Art