Ben Davis | extracted

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Ben Davis, “extracted,” 2024

(courtesy of the Gallery)

Opening Reception: THURSDAY, September 12th from 6-9PM

“Within my practice, I work across a diverse range of media and approaches, often collaboratively,  to explore land and meaning through the lenses of social justice, eco-aesthetics, and postcolonial and perceptual theory. In this way, I unsettle and respond to a physical and socially constructed terrain, emphasizing a reading of landscape as facade, questioning subtexts: the varied and distinct histories, narratives, functions, and values of a place. I recognize land and art as evolving, shifting palimpsests that suggest many layered understandings of place and making, and construct both as transitional spaces between contrasting views and beliefs.”

extracted is intended to unsettle practices of large scale resource extraction, focusing on the example of Uranium City, SK, located on the northern shores of Lake Athabasca, near the border of the Northwest Territories, on the traditional territory of the Chipewyan Dene people. Building on an initial collaboration with Kevin Walby (University of Winnipeg), as well as photographs, maps, and audio interviews with current Uranium City residents, the works in this exhibition are intended as material provocations, bringing to light the contradictions behind photographs of seemingly benign Northern lakes and land, drawing attention to far-reaching consequences for people and place. 

From this starting point, extracted addresses widespread resource extraction more broadly; numerous Northern sites, beset by issues of land devastation, lingering toxicity, environmental damage, relocation, loss of lands, industrial expansion, and community abandonment; issues that are current and critical with both global and local relevance.

Towards these ends, extracted integrates five strands to stir engagement, increase awareness, encourage reflection, and generate discussion: bitumen paintings from photographs of seemingly idyllic yet nonetheless toxic mining sites; arsenical collage using Victoriana wallpaper from satellite images of these same sites; an incrementally disappearing block print edition, a metaphor for loss of environment, peoples, and place; and group tracing from resonant photographs of pertinent sites, accompanied by video and soundscapes recorded during previous group tracing sessions, along with recordings of informal conversation, interviews, and commentary from current residents of Uranium City themselves – voices joining the conversation as parts of an (ever)evolving and layered visual and sonic palimpsest, making art “with” and not just “about.” 

This fifth component, an audio-visual installation, juxtaposes footage of tracings and sound recordings from Uranium City and residencies in Banff and Arbroath, Scotland with footage from Riding Mountain National Park, a relatively untouched and beautiful environment not dissimilar to Uranium City, except that the latter remains unprotected and has been deeply and negatively impacted by long-term, large-scale resource extraction. Projected and filmed at Deep Bay, the video represents a powerful contrast between preserved and protected healthy lands and those lands ruptured and poisoned by extraction. 

The TRC Final Report (2015) states we have much to gain from listening to the Indigenous voices of those most affected by the environmental impacts of other human’s decisions. Listening to these voices might provide a way forward toward healing a region. With the recordings I made when I visited Uranium City and Walby’s earlier interviews with several community members, Indigenous and other frequently marginalized voices from rural, remote, and partially abandoned communities are centered and heard.

Artist talk: Thursday October 10th 6 PM