The musical accompaniment for Littlefield’s dance is contemporary electronic music, providing a sense of dissonance. This entry sets the stage for the cavalcade of color, scent, beauty and intensity that awaits in the galleries beyond. Galanin’s video appears as part of Unsettled, the Museum’s feature exhibition that amasses 200 artworks by 80 artists spanning 2,000 years. The show explores the geography of frontiers characterized by vast expanses of open land, rich natural resources, diverse indigenous peoples, colonialism, and the ongoing conflicts that inevitably arise when these factors coexist. Through a broad selection of art and artifacts, the story of the Greater West-- a super-region bounded from Alaska to Patagonia, and from Australia to the American West-- unfolds. Several other videos, sound elements, and projections appear throughout the exhibition as well. Another sensory surprise is an installation by artist Ed Ruscha, made completely of chocolate. With Chocolate Room, Ruscha uses chocolate as an art-making material, “painting” tiles of paper with a chocolate mixture and installing them across the gallery walls to create an unforgettable olfactory experience. Elsewhere on the third floor, artist Sonia Falcone has created a sprawling, colorful, fragrant artwork comprised of terra cotta plates, dry pigments, spices, and salts found throughout the super-region. Think chili and cinnamon, among other aromas. Another sensory surprise awaits visitors on the second floor, where artist and perfumer Bruno Fazzolari displays a brand-new signature scent that represents the Greater West. The perfume, Unsettled Eau de Parfum, uses sandalwood oil from the South Pacific, a driving force for early trade and contact. The perfume is displayed in a custom decanter in the form of a mushroom cloud that alludes to the legacy of nuclear testing in the state of Nevada. As an added bonus, visitors can sample the perfume with scenting strips in the gallery. If you like it, you can pick up a bottle for yourself or a loved one in the Museum Shop. Also for sale in the Shop is the Unsettled catalogue, a breathtaking publication with a gold foil spine, consisting of 224 pages and featuring 110 color images.
These sensory masterpieces are just a few of the revelatory and unsettling artworks chosen by the Museum’s curatorial director JoAnne Northrup to tell the compelling Greater West narrative, a narrative that spans time, place, gender, and race, challenging the definitions of the latter. Several indigenous contemporary artists like Wendy Red Star, Nicholas Galanin, Brian Jungen, Jaune Quick-to-see Smith, and Teri Rofkar are included alongside numerous Latin American artists such as Ana Teresa Fernández, Sonia Falcone, Minerva Cuevas, Graciela Iturbide, and Rufino Tamayo. These diverse voices appear in conversation with the likes of Chris Burden, Bruce Conner, Trevor Paglen, Edgar Arceneaux, Rodney Graham, Emily Carr, and Georgia O’Keeffe. PreColumbian art lent by the Marjorie Barrick Museum of Art at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, as well as several exemplary southwest pots from the John and Brenda Blom collection round out the exhibition’s ancient roots. Unsettled is a show you need to spend time with, pausing to soak in the sounds and scents, meandering slowly through the galleries so that the show’s themes present themselves in a substantive, meaningful way. Shifting Ground, Colliding Cultures, Colonizing Resources, The Sublime Open, and Experimental Diversity are the labels ascribed to the exhibition, but the visual, sensory stories that emerge are vastly more complex. Unsettled will be on view at the Nevada Museum of Art through January 21. Upon closing, the show will travel to both the Anchorage Museum and Palm Springs Art Museum. Learn more at nevadaart.org. Amanda Horn is a Reno-based writer, yogini, and creative community enthusiast. A former circus performer, she has been pushing boundaries most of her life, constantly redefining her own and testing the radius of the world she inhabits. She currently serves as Director of Communications for the Nevada Museum of Art. Follow her on Twitter @TeboHorn or email her at amanda.horn@nevadaart.org.
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