Eve Andree Laramee

Laramee's interest in the history and culture of science has resulted in collaborations with physicists, hydrologists, geologists, biogeographers, and ecologists since the 1980s.[6][7] Laramee believes that, "by sharing innovations, art-and-science collaborations can energize action to initiate positive social change and promote awareness of environmental and health issues by directly involving communities, extending ways in which cultures imagine, create and understand." [8][9][10]

Uranium Decay, Eve Andree Laramee, video still. Six minute video (detail from installation, "Invisible Fire")Uranium Decay (2012), draws attention to the dark, inverse form of alchemy of the Atomic Age. Responding to the ongoing Fukushima meltdowns the video illuminates the 4.47 billion-year half-life decay cycle of uranium-238 superimposed onto thermographs and news footage. As uranium decays over geological time, it transmutes into “uranium daughters” that cascade into other elements and finally to stable Lead-206. As we are learning post-Fukushima, when climate change occurs and vulnerability spectrums shift, nuclear sites and the life forms surrounding them are at increased risk.

In her recent creative work, Laramee speculates on how human beings use and misuse the natural environment.[11] Artworks that investigate the environmental and health impacts of atomic legacy sites track the invisible radioactive contamination, residues of the nuclear weapons complex and the nuclear energy industry. This multifaceted work cites uranium mining, milling, plutonium production that have resulted in the contamination of surface water, well water and deep aquifer water, soil and air pollution, social injustice, and the consequences upon forms of life.[12] Her work on atomic legacy issues has been featured in the International Uranium Film Festival. Other forms of environmental degradation that she addresses are desertification, climate change, and dredging.

The aspects of the history of science that she explores include alchemy, subjectivity in scientific research, such legendary figures as Charles Darwin and Johannes Kepler.[13][14][15] The environmental/ecological issues that appear in her work include commodification of nature, the political and cultural history of the national parks in the US, and the correlation between human blood and ocean water. Social conditions that she addresses include the impact of radioactive waste and weapons testing upon indigenous peoples in the American West.[16]

Laramee's social-sculpture interventions activate community participation in environmental remediation efforts, encourage responsible behaviors, and invoke political critiques.[17][18] She is currently the executive director of ART/MEDIA for a Nuclear Free Future, an offshoot from ART/MEDIA, a social sculpture founded in 1984 that supported public art works presented in the mass media and created by such invited artists as Jenny Holzer, Hans Haacke, Rachel Rosenthal, Terry Allen, and others. Their projects included artist-designed billboards, television, radio and print interventions, museum exhibitions, lectures, and performance art [19] by disseminating political, environmental, and social activist art works to people who were not members of the traditional art audience.

Apparatus for the Distillation of Vague Intuitions, installation by Eve Andree Laramee, as exhibited at MASSMoCA, North Adams, MA

Laramee's art has been exhibited throughout the United States, Europe, Asia and the Middle East. She has participated in exhibitions at the Venice Biennale, Mass MOCA, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York; the High Museum of Art, Atlanta; the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston; among other institutions.[25][26]

100 Years 100 Stones, public artwork by Eve Andree Laramee in the courtyard of SDSU

Laramee's work is included in the collections of the MacArthur Foundation, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, The Fogg Art Museum of Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the UCLA Armand Hammer Museum, and other public and private collections. Her public art sculpture, 100 Years 100 Stones commemorates the centennial year of San Diego State University.[27]

Laramee has received two grants from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, an Andy Warhol Foundation Grant, two fellowships from the New York Foundation for Arts and grants from the Mid-Atlantic States Arts Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, and the Guggenheim Museum Sculptor-in-Residence Program. International Sculpture Center.[28][29]

• Kate Brown (professor)
• Sandra Lahire
• The Plutonium Files
• Eileen Welsome
• Ruth Faden
• Nuclear Nebraska
• Plutonium in the environment
• History of the anti-nuclear movement
• List of films about nuclear issues
• List of Nuclear-Free Future Award recipients
• Uranium in the environment
• Uranium mining debate
• World Uranium Hearing
• International Uranium Film Festival