Tess Davis, Class of 2024
Environmental Studies and English
Alfredo Jaar, Angel, 2007. C-print mounted on Plexiglas. 2018.10.178
I love stories. Since I was a little girl, I have wanted to be an author, and so when I came to ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø±¬ÍøÕ¾, I was set on being an English major and studying creative writing.
I did not expect to become an Environmental Studies (ES) student. Frankly, I did not know what ES was before ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø±¬ÍøÕ¾, but then, I took an introductory ES course on a whim my first semester. I loved it. English and Environmental Studies are not as different as they seem. Both center stories. After all, people tell themselves complex and often contradictory stories about their environment and place within it. In ES, we study these narratives. How do people develop them? Why? How do these stories affect people’s treatment (or mistreatment) of the natural world?
I was excited when Professor Klingle asked me to co-curate Human Nature with a team of fellow students. I saw it as an excellent opportunity to think about environmental stories in a new way. Before this project, I had little experience with visual art. I was eager to see how visual artists would complement or complicate my understanding of environmental thought throughout the twentieth century. Thus, as we developed the exhibition, I was drawn to works of art that had compelling visual narratives and provided commentary on the act of storytelling. Two works do an outstanding job of this: Angel by Alfredo Jaar (2007) and Sanctus Sonorensis by Philip Zimmermann(2009).
Alfredo Jaar’s Angel is my favorite work in Human Nature. Jaar identifies as a political artist, and he strives to tell stories in his work. Jaar created Angel soon after the end of the Angolan Civil War, and I believe he created it to be "read.” Jaar composed Angel by placing three distinctive photographs of Luanda, Angola’s capital city, next to each other to create the impression that it is a long photograph. The pictures tell a story. The sunrise in the background of the first photograph creates a sense of anticipation. In the middle photograph, a boy, the “angel,” appears in front of the sunrise. The boy looks ahead and points into the distance. In the final photograph, the boy is gone, and the sunrise has progressed. When I look at the final photograph, I feel that the boy remains in spirit, watching over the city.
During our research, we discovered Sanctus Sonorensisin Special Collections and Archives. We ran out of space to include it in the exhibition, but it is a lovely piece that thematically compliments Angel. SanctusSonorensisis an art book that chronicles migrants’ journeys from the Sonorensis Desert to the United States through photographs of the sky at different points in the day. It has gilded pages, sharp corners, and archaic font, all of which resembles the Bible. On each page, there is a blessing for migrant laborers. Angel and Sanctus Sonorensis ask viewers to think about spirituality and its influence on people and land. Jaar invokes spirituality by titling the photograph Angel. Likewise, Sanctus Sonorensiscenters migrant laborers and asserts their right to spirituality and blessings.
Human Nature calls our attention to environmental history, beliefs, and stories. It is an exhibition with layered meaning. There are environmental stories and thoughts embedded within each work of art. Yet, there is also a larger narrative. Human Nature is a snapshot of our current understanding of the environment as college students in 2023 as we celebrate thefiftieth anniversary of Environmental Studies at ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø±¬ÍøÕ¾. The exhibition reflects our arthroscopic upbringing where the boundary between humans and the environment has dissolved. I hope that this snapshot will be helpful to future students and scholars as they assemble the story of environmental history.