Remembering the Unseen
2022-23, ( 75” x 36” x 36” ) - Steel, Porcelain, Wood, Yellow Jade, and Braille) - Art Innovators Competition, Bioeconomy Institute, Iowa State University
Collaborator:
Debra Marquart, Distinguished Professor, Liberal Arts & Sciences; Poet Laureate of Iowa
Marquart’s research into the impact of oil extraction in the Bakken formation in North Dakota on surrounding communities led to her essay Postcards from Boomtown. Braille text on the porcelain urn has excerpts from Marquart’s essay. Lilligren’s research on the geological formations underlying the Bakken formation and canopic jars form the visual component for the project.
While we work to develop alternative sources for fuel and energy, Remembering the Unseen presents the memory of what oil means and meant, and notes we are witnesses to the social consequences of resource extraction. The jar’s form derives from Egyptian canopic containers used to hold vital organs necessary for the afterlife. Each was inscribed with hieroglyphs and had a stylized animal head as the lid. An oil molecule was fashioned from pit-fired porcelain and yellow jade and sits on top of the jar. The plinth uses visual metaphor for the geology of the oil fields.
Containing beauty and awareness of our role in addressing challenges related to climate change, resource allocation, divestment, and development of renewable alternatives to oil, Remembering the Unseen is a work by two colleagues who perform this mysterious cultural function known as artist. On our campus, scientists work intellectually to make the invisible visible. Artists work intellectually and expressively to create visual works of art. If you have ever been moved by any work of art, be it visual, music, dance, poetry or writing, you have experienced a connection to our collective humanity; that which makes us part of communities, groups, and for the time being, this campus. Art doesn’t broadcast, it receives.
Braille text on the jar:
“extracting a million barrels a day in the Bakken one average month 9.4 billion cubic feet of natural gas flared into the atmosphere call it conflict-free oil, it doesn’t feel conflict-free to me, she says.”
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