EXTRACTION (ATACAMA DESERT)
2021
Series of seven mixed media works
Various minerals on copper plates
Each 114 x 87 cm, artist’s frame

Extraction (Atacama Desert) is a series of seven unique works mapping rare resources and minerals 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 concentration of lithium and other minerals visible to the naked eye. This remote sensing technique which combines various satellite images from outside the human 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, cerium sulphides, cobalt, manganese, and bismuth) are applied as pigment by hand to copper sheets to make the images materiality tell the story of their own ecological history.

By appropriating the technologies of mining corporations, the works in the series mimic the detached neocolonial manner the western world views the global south and its resource-laden lands. Whilst revealing the devastating effect on these fragile environments of humankind’s unquenchable demand for lithium and rare-earth minerals for use in electric vehicles and electronics. The series documents the transformation process in which the digital satellite data was made visible through manual labour in the physical world, highlighting the cybernetisation of nature, a place where it is almost impossible to discern natural and artificial elements.

Through various combinations of light spectrums and pigments, each of the seven works in the Extraction series offers a different interpretation of the same place and time. The pigments are non-toxic in their compounds.

Text by Duncan Ballantyne-Way