SUNAURA TAYLOR

SUNAURA TAYLOR

Speculative Aquifers, 2019. Mixed media: original drawings and watercolors from Taylor; wheatpasted and adhesive printed research documentation affixed to gallery wall; scholarly text printed in vinyl affixed to vitrine and displayed on frosted acrylic panel. Dimensions variable, 2021.

This new project from scholar and artist Sunaura Taylor focuses on the speculative potentialities in aquifer ecosystems, troubling what Taylor terms disabled ecologies: “the webs of disability that are created, spatially, temporally, and across species boundaries, when ecosystems are contaminated, depleted, and profoundly altered.” This mixed media installation, conceived of and designed by the curators for [move_semantics] by the curators seeks to translate interdisciplinary research, practice, and a scholarly project into the social space of exhibition. The media chosen from this project considers in particular the disabled ecology of the Hughes Aircraft Lagoon aquifer site in Tuscon, and the aquifer as symbolic of Taylor’s concept of disabled ecologies, and is presented through project text and research documentation, alongside Taylor’s original drawings and watercolors.