Live BlogWhen you walk into the David Zwirner Art Gallery in Chelsea, you are surrounded by an overwhelming sense of desolation and destruction.
The gallery has opened its doors to a video installation by artist Diana Thater that demonstrates the aftermath of the infamous catastrophe at Chernobyl, the Ukrainian nuclear power plant that exploded in 1986 and effectively created a wasteland in its wake.
The installation focuses on the current state of the city where the power plant was located: Pripyat, Ukraine.
Thater, who is known for examining the relationship between humanity and the natural world, graduated from NYU in 1984 with a degree in art history. In the exhibit, she takes the observer on a realistic tour of the wildlife, natural landscape and the ruins of the city, showing how they all interact.
The Ukrainian government is currently making efforts to bring wildlife and endangered species back into the area. Although the government is labeling the area safe and suitable for organic life, Thater conveys the paradoxical nature of their attempt to produce life in a permanently scarred region.
The exhibit is set with six projectors, each showing different clips on connecting walls, which create an incomplete hexagram and an opening that provides entry and exit. The ceiling and concrete floor have been purposefully left untouched and unkempt to enhance the simulation effect. To make the video experiences more life-like, Thater
multilayered the clips she recorded. The video clips are surrounded by an overarching video of the local theater in Pripyat, which was built for the people who worked for the Chernobyl nuclear power station.
“You see this world inside the theater, but then, you see this theater inside that world,” Thater said. “So there is this relationship between the theater and the world and you see the theater inside [the gallery]. So there is a relationship between who you are, where you are [and] what exists in Pripyat.”
“I am trying to enclose you,” she added. “That is, a cognitive understanding or a kind of question or a kind of empathy which I’m trying to elicit about the animals who live or who are attempting to persist in this world with small lives, whose need is to live and this is the only landscape to live, theater in the world and the world in this theater.”
The exhibit is impactful and illustrates the aftermath of the Chernobyl disaster in a new way. It has the power to plunge visitors deep into a different world and pull them back out in a matter of 15 minutes.
“In particular I thought it was really striking that you could see your shadow on the walls caught between projectors,” said Stern sophomore Becky Waddell, who visited the gallery. “I already had the feeling that I had been transported, but that gave it an even more eerie feeling.”
“I think my favorite part though was that the destroyed, abandoned areas were juxtaposed with really beautiful images of thriving wildlife,” Waddell added. “I felt like it brought a little bit of hopefulness to the whole exhibit.”
Diana Thater’s “Chernobyl” will be open through Dec. 15 at the David
Zwirner Gallery located at 525 W. 19th St.
A version of this article appeared in the Tuesday, Dec.11 print edition. Tolga Goff is a contributing writer. Email her at [email protected].
