Extraction, A Dialogue of Extremes, Diane Burko’s solo exhibition at Rowan University Museum of Contemporary Art, pairs two bodies of work: Arctic paintings based on NSF-funded climate research and works on Amazon mining and deforestation. The show was created as the research grant’s community engagement component. In this interview, curator Mary Salvante discusses how the exhibition came together, the tension between the two series, how the work uses beauty to address climate change, and what the museum hopes visitors take away.
The exhibition Extraction, A Dialogue of Extremes grew out of an NSF-funded science project, the ARION research led by Dr. Lauren Kipp with Woods Hole, as its community engagement component. How did the museum come to build a show around a scientific grant, and what made Burko the right artist to translate that research into art?
Dr. Kipp initiated the collaboration with Diane as part of her NSF grant, which required a community engagement component. She decided that an exhibition featuring art that responded to her research would be the most accessible and meaningful way to engage the public. DB brings her own research into her work to address various forms and causes of climate change and its impacts on the natural environment, so Lauren decided she would be a good fit to work with on the project. They proposed the concept to me, and I saw an opportunity to bring an interdisciplinary exhibition exploring the intersection of art and science to RUMOCA.
The exhibition turns on one word used in two opposite ways: scientists extracting Arctic data to understand climate change, and mining extracting resources that destroy the Amazon. How did that become the show’s spine?
Once I agreed to curate and produce this show, I visited Diane’s studio to see the work she was creating based on Dr. Kipp’s research. Once there, I saw other work Diane was developing and immediately recognized the connection between the Arctic and Amazon work. In both bodies of work, Diane uses a sphere shape that, in the Arctic paintings, indicates the Earth to show where the research was located; in the Amazon series, the sphere frames the locations in the Amazon where corporate mining sites are located. One sphere acts as a map; the other as a portal. Together, the two bodies of work complete the narrative thread of climate change’s complexities.
