Extraction (Atacama Desert)

Extraction (Atacama Desert)
2021
Series of seven unique works

Extraction (Atacama Desert) is a series of seven unique works mapping natural resources in the heavily mined landscape of the Atacama Desert in Chile. The artist has used a remote sensing technique by accessing data from the European Sentinel II satellite to make the distribution of lithium and other minerals visible to the naked eye. This technology which combines various satellite images from outside the visible light spectrum (infrared and ultraviolet) is frequently employed by mining companies to detect resources in the ground.

The minerals extracted from the desert landscape – lithium salt, cobalt, cerium sulphides, manganese, and bismuth – are applied as pigments by hand to copper plates to make the images materiality tell the story of their own ecological production process (the pigments are non-toxic in their compounds). By appropriating the technologies of mining corporations, the works in the series mimic the detached neocolonial manner in which the western world views the global south and its resource-laden lands. Revealing the devastating effect mankind’s unquenchable demand for lithium and rare-earth minerals for electric vehicles and electronics is having on the landscape of this fragile environment.

Through various combinations of light spectrums and pigments, each of the seven works in the Extraction series is unique and offers a different interpretation of the same place and time.

Text by Duncan Ballantyne-Way

Extraction (Atacama Desert), (2021). Cerium, lithium, cobalt, bismuth-vanadate on copper, each 114cm x 87cm

Extraction #1 (Atacama Desert), (2021). Cerium, lithium, cobalt, bismuth-vanadate on copper, 114cm x 87cm

Extraction #2 (Atacama Desert), (2021). Cerium, lithium, manganese, bismuth-vanadate on copper, 114cm x 87cm

Extraction #3 (Atacama Desert), (2021). Cerium, lithium, cobalt, bismuth-vanadate on copper, 114cm x 87cm

Extraction #4 (Atacama Desert), (2021). Cobalt, manganese, bismuth-vanadate on copper, 114cm x 87cm

Extraction #5 (Atacama Desert), (2021). Cerium, lithium, cobalt, bismuth-vanadate on copper, 114cm x 87cm

Extraction #6 (Atacama Desert), (2021). Cerium, lithium, cobalt, bismuth-vanadate on copper, 114cm x 87cm

Extraction #7 (Atacama Desert), (2021). Manganese, cobalt, bismuth-vanadate on copper, 114cm x 87cm