Am Clipping Chernobyl As 2019

alice miceli
projeto chernobyl
at americas society
press
contents
Uncanny Landscapes: Alice Miceli Interviewed by Louis Bury

BOMB Magazine | 09 Jan 2020 p.3
NYT Recommends Alice Miceli’s Projeto Chernobyl at Americas

Society
The New York Times | 02 Jan 2020 p.10
The Photographer Who X-Raying Chernobyl

Atlas Obscura | 04 Dec 2019 p.12
An Artist’s Radiographic Photos Cast New Light on Chernobyl

Hyperallergic | 25 Nov 2019 p.16
Projeto Chernobyl Captures a Post-Human Landscape on

Radiographic Film
The Architect’s Newspaper | 12 Nov 2019 p.17
Alice Miceli on X-rayind Chernobyl

Art in America | 11 Nov 2019 p.21
Three Exhibitions to See in New York this Weekend

The Art Newspaper | 10 Oct 2019 p.23
Exhibition Review: Alice Miceli

Musée Magazine | 09 Oct 2019 p.26
“Projeto Chernobyl”: a Speech on Invisible Violence

Arte Al Día | 07 Oct 2019 p.30
Your Concise New York Art Guide for Fall 2019

Hyperallergic | 10 Sep 2019 p.33
1/10/2020 Uncanny Landscapes: Alice Miceli Interviewed - BOMB Magazine
Uncanny Landscapes: Alice Miceli

Interviewed by Louis Bury
Photographing radiation at Chernobyl.
Alice Miceli, Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, PTT-8 Sign, Highly Contaminated Ground, Belarus, 2008, archival inkjet print. Courtesy of
the artist and Galeria Nara Roesler.
The lightboxes installed at eye level on black, temporary walls emit the only glow in an otherwise
hushed, darkened gallery. Each lightbox illuminates an oversized photographic negative whose sooty
contents evoke blurry, zoomed-in microscope slides. Yet these abstract-seeming images are in fact
representational, the product of unique photographic processes that Brazilian artist Alice Miceli
devised to capture traces of the invisible gamma radiation that will linger for millennia near the site
of the 1986 Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant disaster. Through extensive, collaborative
https://bombmagazine.org/articles/uncanny-landscapes-alice-miceli-interviewed/ 1/8
experimentation, Miceli discovered that gamma radiation—whose wavelengths are too short to be
captured by traditional photographic processes—leaves behind marks on film when allowed months-
long exposure times. At the Chernobyl site, she embedded human chest x-ray film throughout the
landscape—sometimes literally burying it in the ground—then left it there for periods of between two
to eight months to produce the core images of Projeto Chernobyl (2006–10).
On view at the Americas Society, the results offer an uncanny aesthetic record of a deadly,
undetectable substance. The images also constitute a novel, strangely intimate approach to
landscape photography, in which the landscape has been depicted from an ordinarily inaccessible
interior vantage, rather than from a remote, external one. This approach pointed the way forward for
Miceli’s In Depth (Minefields) (2014–18), in which she photographed active minefields from within the
fields. Miceli’s interest in what she calls “impenetrable” landscapes raises questions not only about
photography’s literal and figurative stakes but also its technical and philosophical capacities. With
disconcerting immediacy, Miceli’s unconventional landscapes take the viewer right up to—and then a
little bit beyond—vision’s limits.
—Louis Bury
Louis Bury
Where did the idea for Projeto Chernobyl come from?
Alice Miceli
It emerged from a study group in Rio with Charles Watson, a professor who was an influential
mentor and a powerful critical thinker. We were tasked with contemplating how to represent silence
visually. Chernobyl crossed my mind because I first imagined it to be an empty and silent place, on
account of being abandoned. As a photographer, I became interested in the attempt to look at a place
that doesn’t fully reveal itself in the visual. Chernobyl is thought to be empty but is in actuality filled
with invisible gamma radiation, which is imperceptible to human senses, except for the destructive
traces it leaves behind. It is an ontological question.
LB
How to represent aesthetically that which isn’t visible to the human eye?
AM
Yes, precisely. It’s a question about the nature of vision. Gamma radiation has an extremely short
wavelength, which makes it small enough to pass through almost every material, even a very dense
one with tight molecules. Whereas light, which is electromagnetic radiation from the sun, has a much
larger wavelength, causing it to bump into things and reflect off of them.
Alice Miceli, fragment of a window II—2.494 µSv (21.01.09–07.04.09), backlight, radiographic

negative. Courtesy of the artist and Galeria Nara Roesler.
LB
You had to study a lot of science to prepare for this project. How did that study manifest in the
photographic processes you devised?
AM
Before I went to Chernobyl, I conducted eight months of experiments in a radiation institute in Brazil
with the help of a physicist named Luis Tauhata. The lab had actual radioactive sources, including
Cesium-137, which is the element most present in the Chernobyl contamination. Using these sources,
I built miniature environments that approximated conditions in Chernobyl. Those experiments
revealed that it was possible to imprint images from gamma rays. In the lab, I used dental film
because of its small size. In Chernobyl, we switched to human chest x-ray film for its larger format.
LB
Are the negatives themselves contaminated with radiation?
AM
No. There’s a difference between being contaminated with radiation, which occurred to the first
responders to the Chernobyl explosion, and being irradiated or exposed to radioactivity, which
occurs when a cancer patient undergoes radiotherapy. The negatives in the exhibition were all
irradiated.
LB
How does this manifest in the negatives’ visual appearance?
AM
The results might appear like abstract images but in fact are not because the shapes they contain are
mimetic in relation to the source that imprinted them. It’s just that this source doesn’t necessarily
conform to the shape of things as we know them; it has its own shape, that of the invisible
contamination.
LB
Which parts of the images reveal the radiation’s traces?
AM
The darker segments in the images are the marks of the radiation, because in this version of the work
we are looking at the actual negatives that were exposed in Chernobyl. The very dark specks were
caused by hot particles embedded in the landscape’s surface, while the swirls and splotches were
caused by contamination emitted from those particles.
LB
In your Americas Society exhibition, why did you decide to display the original negatives rather than
positive reproductions of them?
AM
This work has two versions, a negative and a positive one. The positives allow us to see the
contamination differently, which is crucial given the project’s questions about the nature of vision.
Both versions are life-size accounts of the invisible contamination in Chernobyl.
LB
I like that you don’t fetishize process for its own sake. You’re interested in a particular aesthetic or
philosophic question and then adopt or invent photographic methods to address that question.
AM
Yes, it depends on what’s at stake in a specific work’s problem. It’s not that I always want to create my
own tools. Projeto Chernobyl presented problems that required specialized learning and methods,
but In Depth (Minefields), which depicts minefields from within mined areas, used traditional
cameras. And my earlier work in Cambodia, 88 from 14,000 (2011), was based on an archive of
already produced images: mugshots of people who were killed in the Security Prison 21 in Phnom
Penh during the Khmer Rouge regime.
Installation view of Alice Miceli: Projeto Chernobyl at Americas Society. Photo by

OnWhiteWall.com.
LB
Can you talk more about your work’s stakes? Both Projeto Chernobyl and In Depth posed risks to
your own well-being.
AM
I’m moved by limit situations because they confront you with stimulating questions that you might
not have otherwise encountered. There’s sometimes a lot of risk, yes, but it’s controlled, as in
extreme sports. For example, I only go to minefields that are in the process of being demined and
whose remaining active explosives have been mapped. Safety precautions are never one hundred-
percent certain, but having chosen to put myself in these situations, it’s as safe as it can be. Both
Projeto Chernobyl and In Depth deal with landscapes that have been rendered impenetrable by the
actions of humans, so the larger question in both works is how to negotiate an access that counters
these occupations.
LB
One of your supplemental Projeto Chernobyl images is titled Chernobyl Exclusion Zone Access Map.
The idea of an “access map” for an “exclusion zone” is an interesting paradox.
AM
Yes. This situation is full of contradictions. One of the signs inside the zone reads: “Chernobyl: No
entry. No exit.”
LB
That’s perfect.
AM
The impenetrability in Chernobyl is not only spatial but also visual: you can’t see the danger there,
whereas landmines are visible.
LB
You can see them in the minefield?
AM
Sometimes yes, sometimes no; it depends on the type of explosive, its placement in the ground, and
the topography and vegetation of the mined area. What I mean is that they’re not invisible matter.
What’s impenetrable in a minefield is the depth of space that you can no longer access.
Alice Miceli, fragment of a field V—9.120 µSv (07.05.09–21.07.09), backlight, radiographic

negative. Courtesy of the artist and Galeria Nara Roesler.
LB
Many of In Depth’s landscapes contain warning markers and signs, which recall the markers—train
station information, radiation warning signs—you include in the supplementary images for Projeto
Chernobyl.
AM
The visual design of the Chernobyl radiation signage is interesting, at once alarming and pragmatic. I
could see a documentary record of them as a project in itself.
LB
You’ve essentially already done it! Though your supplemental images don’t so much document the
landscape as document your visit to the landscape and the performance of that visit. The train and
train station images—as you progress through Germany, Poland, Belarus—make this clear.
AM
Precisely. It’s a diary. Of the work, not of my life.
LB
To me it suggests a dialectic between penetrability and impenetrability, rather than a situation of
pure exclusion.
AM
Of course. I entered the site, so there is a strained relation between exclusion and access, of how far
one can go, or of how distant one stays. This problematic is the basis of both projects, systematically
explored.
LB
What does that unique interior vantage make possible?
AM
It offers a counter alignment from within land that has been taken in the course of territorial war and
left filled with explosives for generations to come. It’s an act of resistance, even if a symbolic one,
and in that is not only a poetic action but also a political one.
LB
How so?
AM
To look at Chernobyl by means of radiation itself; to offer a vantage point from within minefields. We
tend to look at disasters as a marked date in the past. But in the case of both Chernobyl and the
minefields, the disasters remain literally contemporary: the mines and the radiation stay in the
present tense. Radioactive contamination, in particular, presents a further paradox: a problem that
stays urgent on a timescale that to humans is effectively eternal.
Alice Miceli: Projeto Chernobyl is on view at the Americas Society in New York City until January 25.
Louis Bury is the author of Exercises in Criticism (Dalkey Archive) and Assistant Professor of English at Hostos
Community College, CUNY. He writes regularly about visual art for Hyperallergic, and his creative and critical work
has been published in Bookforum, Brooklyn Rail, Los Angeles Review of Books, Boston Review, and The Believer.
photography process Chernobyl minefields
Read also:
First Order of Decay by Amy Benson
1/8/2020 What to See Right Now in New York Art Galleries - The New York Times
https://nyti.ms/36jmDpZ
ART REVIEWS
What to See Right Now in New

York Art Galleries
A baronessʼs watercolors; Jasper Johnsʼs crosshatches; a survey of abstract photography; and Alice Miceliʼs
radiographs of Chernobyl.
Jan. 2, 2020
‘Artist in Exile: The Visual Diary of Baroness Hyde de Neuville’

Through Jan. 26. New-York Historical Society Museum & Library, 170 Central Park West, Manhattan; 212-873-3400, nyhistory.org.
In 1805, the Baroness Hyde de Neuville (1771-1849) chased Napoleon Bonaparte’s army across Europe in order
to obtain a pardon for her husband, an aristocrat accused of conspiring to assassinate the arriviste French
emperor. Her plea succeeded, the Neuvilles were banished to America, and so starts the story of “Artist in
Exile: The Visual Diary of Baroness Hyde de Neuville” at the New-York Historical Society.
Born in Sancerre, France, Neuville was a self-taught artist, which means she learned primarily from books and
illustrations, since women of her era weren’t allowed to draw from live models. She was a quick study though,
and the swift arc of her proficiency is obvious in this exhibition of over 110 watercolors and drawings.
Neuville owned a portable watercolor paint box, a new contraption during that period, and she used it to
document landscapes and people, flora and fauna, factories and mansions throughout the Eastern Seaboard and
New York State. “Study of a Tree Trunk with Lichens and Fungi,” from 1807 to 1814, looks almost abstract and
modern, while a “Corner of Greenwich Street” (1810) captures the spot where the World Trade Center would
later stand. And “Entrance Gate to the White House Garden with Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, D.C.”
(1821) is the only known view of the White House at the time, with a stone wall, triumphal arch and formal
gardens stretched out behind it.
Although Neuville traveled in privileged circles, she produced some of the most accurate and sympathetic
portraits of marginalized Native Americans and mixed race and enslaved people from that period. (However,
“Mary, a ʻSquaw’ of the Oneida Tribe,” from 1807, shown in a striped robe-blanket and leather leggings, uses a
term probably derived from the Eastern Algonquian word for “woman” that is now considered derogatory.)
After returning to France in the 1820s, Neuville appears to have given up painting and drawing. It’s a shame,
since her vision and craft were so lively and perspicuous. Perhaps, after traveling in seven countries and
experiencing harrowing sea voyages, post-revolutionary France seemed a bit boring. MARTHA
SCHWENDENER
‘After Virginia’
Through Jan. 11. Chart, 74 Franklin Street, Manhattan; 646-799-9319, chart-gallery.com.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/02/arts/design/new-york-art-galleries.html 1/3
1/8/2020 What to See Right Now in New York Art Galleries - The New York Times
A small gallery at the reinstalled Museum of Modern Art is devoted to photographic abstraction. But anyone
seriously interested in the subject should make a point of seeing this far more ambitious, cannily selected and
intelligently hung show. ARTHUR LUBOW
Jasper Johns
Through Jan. 18. Craig F. Starr, 5 East 73rd Street, Manhattan; 212-570-1739, craigstarr.com.
After the flags and the targets, after the head-scratching canvases affixed with rulers or silverware, Jasper
Johns took a drive out to the Hamptons in 1972 and saw, in the opposite lane of the Long Island Expressway,
some kind of crosshatch pattern on a speeding car. Mr. Johns likes a good myth — but whatever inspired him,
America’s most pokerfaced painter embraced something like total abstraction in the 1970s, via mirrored or
syncopated fields of back-and-forth lines that, on occasion, obfuscated underlying images or designs.
Eleven of these crosshatched paintings and works on paper, many lent from Mr. Johns’s personal collection and
all delighting in irony and misidentification, are on view now at Craig F. Starr. (The show celebrates the gallery’s
15th anniversary; its unexpected curator is none other than Agnes Gund, the extraordinary philanthropist who
donated Mr. Johns’s crosshatched “Between the Clock and the Bed” to MoMA.)
Whether in the red, yellow and blue slashes of “Untitled” (1979) or the more densely chromatic “Cicada” (1979),
Mr. Johns used crosshatching to reconcile the theatrics of Abstract Expressionism with the matter-of-factness of
his own early work. Each one attempts to give form to the paradox of expression through nondisclosure; even a
drawing here of “Dancers on a Plane” (1982), which supplements the crosshatches with a little symmetrical
scrotum, gives away almost nothing about sex or self. Three small works from the “Between the Clock and Bed”
series, inspired by Edvard Munch, prefigure Mr. Johns’s anxious figuration of the 1980s. Yet this show confirms
that death and anomie were already haunting the crosshatches as early as 1974, when he christened his tightly
packed, carefully mirrored chevrons with a title that could apply to so many of his unquiet abstractions: “Corpse
and Mirror.” JASON FARAGO
Alice Miceli
Through Jan. 25. Americas Society, 680 Park Avenue, Manhattan; 212-249-8950, as-coa.org.
What does radiation look like? How can we envision something we can’t see? These questions are at the core of
“Projeto Chernobyl” (2006-10), a series of radiographs produced by the Brazilian artist Alice Miceli.
To make the images, Ms. Miceli developed her own methods for capturing radiation on film (a process most
often used for X-rays). She then traveled to Ukraine, where she placed radiographic film around the Chernobyl
exclusion zone, an area set aside after the nuclear power plant disaster in 1986 that remains largely abandoned.
The film stayed put for anywhere from two to eight months. Some of the negatives were ruined by the elements
or couldn’t be found again, but Ms. Miceli recovered 30.
They’re on display at Americas Society, illuminated by light boxes in a dramatically darkened gallery. Outlines
of trees or grass are sometimes recognizable, but mostly the images contain swirls and blurs and ghostly voids
of gray. Some have white patches so bright, they seem poised to burn through: traces of “hot spots” of nuclear
contamination, according to the artist.
For the viewer, there’s a gap between the abstract radiographs and what one knows they’re meant to show. It’s a
haunting and fitting disjunction for trying to comprehend such severe, man-made devastation. We may not be
able to fully picture it, but we know that it is real. JILLIAN STEINHAUER
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/02/arts/design/new-york-art-galleries.html 3/3
1/8/2020 The Photographer Who X-Rayed Chernobyl - Atlas Obscura
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/chernobyl-x-ray-photographs 1/4
The Photographer Who

X-Rayed Chernobyl
How to make the invisible visible.
BY W I N N I E L E E • D E C E M B E R 4, 2 0 1 9
  
Alice Miceli, Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, PTT-8 Sign, Highly Contaminated Ground, Belarus, 2008 CO U RT E SY T H E
A RT I ST A N D G A L E R I A N A R A RO E S L E R
W
hile living in Berlin in 2007, Brazilian artist Alice Miceli took long train rides
—18 hours or more—to Belarus, then another leg, by car or train, to
Chernobyl. She made this journey more than 20 times. With permission to
be in Chernobyl’s Exclusion Zone before tours were available, she photographed the site
using a regular camera, but also documented the area—and the legacy of the 1986 nuclear
disaster there—in a different, more extraordinary way. Miceli placed radiographic film
plates used for chest X-rays—specifically sensitive to radiation—wrapped in layers of
industrial plastic on the ground, on windows, on trees. She wanted to make visual records
of something invisible to the naked eye, namely the area’s radioactive contamination,
particularly the isotope cesium 137. “It is interesting that radiation has shape,” she says.
“It has physicality. It operates at a specific frequency that can be recorded, if only we
could place ourselves in a position to see it. It became clear to me that, in this case, it
would be necessary to create my own tools to make this happen.”
Miceli created a special pinhole camera and did meticulous tests at the Institute of
Radiological Sciences in Rio de Janeiro, but she still didn’t entirely know what to expect
when she got into the field. “In terms of the radiographic techniques that I had been
developing, I didn’t have any idea about what kind of images I might be able to record
once actually outside the lab and in Chernobyl, encountering not a controlled model but
the full-scale radiation,” she says.
The resulting images, which are currently on exhibit at Americas Society/Council of the
Americas in New York, are unexpected and don’t follow any predictable patterns. Some
glow with ghostly lines and swirls, but many of them are mottled darkness (with the dark
areas indicating radiation). The visual effect is striking, but its emotional impact is
greater. “Chernobyl as it is exists in our planet today concerns all of us,” she says.
The artist has continued to be fascinated with natural and social landscapes that, like
Chernobyl’s, have been impacted by trauma. Her other work has explored Security Prison
21 in Cambodia and minefields in post-conflict countries.
Miceli discussed with Atlas Obscura her inspiration and the experiments she conducted
for the Chernobyl Project. The exhibition is on view through January 25, 2020.
What inspired you to go to Chernobyl and attempt to document its

radioactivity?
I read a story in a magazine in which a scientist mentions how quiet it is in the Exclusion
Zone in Chernobyl, and I realized that the zone could be a powerful place to explore the
idea of silence. I looked at hundreds of photojournalistic images of the site and I realized
they were all incomplete somehow; they were just photographs of ruins. They are
deceitful in the way they leave out the central narrative of the story. They just show a
place in decay, but it could be any place in decay. The photographs say nothing about the
fact that the landscape has been changed forever at the atomic level. This interested me
as a challenge and a question—the conceptual challenge of using the medium of
photography to capture what cannot be seen.
What was your first impression of Chernobyl?

When I first went to Belarus, I was already working on the technology for almost a year,
but I had never actually been in Chernobyl [in Ukraine]. Being there made me witness the
humanitarian crisis that the situation has caused in Belarus over the years. Right after
having returned to Rio, where I was then based, I asked myself: How has this first trip
altered the project? The central issue is the (in)visibility of radiation. Physical visibility,
considering that my images capture the invisible, but also sociopolitical visibility,
considering that even though the reactor is across the border, in Ukraine, contamination
is at higher levels in Belarus, a country that is even less socially visible than its neighbor.
How did you decide where to place the radiographic plates?

Once I got there, I began looking for the most contaminated spots, because the emission
was strongest and the image was most likely to be exposed more quickly, more clearly. I
always carry a light meter when I take photographs, so it felt normal this time around to
carry a dosimeter, which measures the level of radiation embedded in organic matter. I
spent a lot of time walking around the zone and mapping out areas with signals strong
enough to make an exposure, but not so strong that it would be dangerous for me to be
there.
Can you describe how your radiographs were made?

Two technologies were developed. First, there is a pinhole camera, adjusted to capture
images only from invisible gamma rays, on to radiographic film. We built a steel box with
a lead cover, to attenuate radiation and protect the film. The actual camera went inside
the box, and was a much thicker lead cube with a conical, minuscule pinhole. This
technique worked well in the extremely controlled and miniature setting of a lab, but not
so much in full-scale contaminated nature, as in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone.
The second technique, the one we experimented with in Chernobyl, was the development
of autoradiographs that use all sorts of different contaminated matter within the
Exclusion Zone as their source. An autoradiograph, or autoradiogram, is an image
imprinted on to radiographic film produced by the gamma rays from radioactive matter.
The film is placed next to or in direct contact with contaminated matter, thus producing
life-size images of the invisible contamination. That’s what we see in the show.
What was the most challenging aspect of your project?

It turned out that each good image needed to be exposed to radiation for quite an
extended period of time—at least two months. Some were there for eight months. We
marked the landscape and made detailed notes to make sure we’d have a shot at finding
the experiments again, but many were lost.
What was the most surprising thing about your experience there?
That being in Chernobyl was for me a very peaceful, calming, and focused activity.
This interview was edited for length and clarity.
AT L A S O B S C U R A T R I P S
Photographing Chernobyl in
Winter
View This Trip
E N E RGY NUCLEAR D I S A ST E R S P H OTO G R A P H Y V I S UA L
1/8/2020 An Artist's Radiographic Photos Cast New Light on Chernobyl
ART
An Artist’s Radiographic Photos Cast New Light on

Chernobyl
Anyone willing to view Alice Miceli’s Projeto Chernobyl on its own terms, to see
radiography as both a practical tool and a potential art form, will be richly
rewarded.
Ilana Novick November 25, 2019
Alice Miceli photographed the Chernobyl Exclusion

Zone in Ukraine between 2006 and 2010, 20 years
after the area’s famous nuclear reactor explosion.
She didn’t focus on the buildings reduced to cracker
crumbs, the rusted and abandoned ferris wheels, or
other stops on what’s becoming a disaster tourism
Alice Miceli: Projeto Chernobyl at destination, especially after the release of the
Americas Society, October 9, 2019-
January 25, 2020 (photo by eponymous HBO series. Miceli was there instead to
OnWhiteWall.com) capture an invisible villain, the gamma rays that
lingered from the explosion — dangerous, even fatal,
but invisible to the naked eye and traditional photography. Instead, she used
radiographic film, typically for X-rays, to make the gamma rays visible.
Projeto Chernobyl, a selection of 30 radiographs now on view at The Americas Society,

is the result of this experiment. Before visiting, I wondered whether seeing the gamma
rays alone would have the emotional weight of depictions of the destruction they
caused. Was Miceli akin to an X-ray tech for environmental disaster, assessing damage
regular cameras couldn’t penetrate?
Visitors hoping for more information about Chernobyl itself

might be disappointed, but fortunately the radiographs
work very well as artworks on their own. Visitors enter
through a room containing a short film and wall text
explaining Miceli’s process. Together, they provide just
enough information to elucidate what’s on view. Past a black
curtain is a dark hallway lined on both sides by radiographs,
Alice Miceli, “fragment of a field VI – whose backlit glow is not much stronger than the average
9.120 µSv (07.05.09 – 21.07.09),” candle, which gives the room a haunted quality. Although
backlight, radiographic negative limited to gray-scale the radiographs are remarkably
(courtesy of the artist and Galeria Nara
Roesler) expressive.
https://hyperallergic.com/526464/an-artists-radiographic-photos-cast-new-light-on-chernobyl/ 1/3
1/8/2020 An Artist's Radiographic Photos Cast New Light on Chernobyl
The lack of a conventional focal point or frame means there’s a lot happening all over,
which in other artwork might be distracting or even frustrating to a viewer yearning
for compositional direction or grounding; “fragment of a roof I – 3.168 µSv (17.11.08 –
21.01.09)” looks like scattered stars in the night sky. My favorite of the pictures,
“fragment of a field V – 9.120 µSv (07.05.09 – 21.07.09),” on the middle wall of the back
room, includes what looks like cupped hands at the right edge of the frame.
In “fragment of a wooden wall III – 2.236 µSv (21.01.09 –

07.04.09),” the rays look like the graffiti tags scratched into
the windows of subway cars. The thick, truncated gray-and-
white lines in “fragment of a field III – 9.120 µSv (07.05.09 –
21.07.09)” are almost fluffy, resembling the tousled fur of a
dog after someone has pet it more than the field of grass or
wheat that is likely depicted.
Alice Miceli, “fragment of a field V – The marks in “fragment of a field I – 9.888 µSv (07.08.08 –
9.120 µSv (07.05.09 – 21.07.09),”
backlight, radiographic negative 17.11.08)” resemble blood vessels — thin black lines are
Roesler) scratched into tree-like patterns against a gray field — while
“fragment of a field VIII – 5.908 µSv (17.11.08 – 21.01.09),”
stacked with blocks of gray and white, evokes Mark Rothko,
if he had veered from his reds and oranges.
Even when it’s not being used for human X-rays,

radiographic images can start to resemble body parts and
bones. Much like an extended visit with Rorschach blocks,
the more I looked at them, the more I could see objects or
people in the abstraction. On the right wall of the first
room, in “fragment of the trunk of a tree I – 6.920 µSv
(17.11.08 – 21.01.09),” I thought I saw the circular outlines of
Alice Miceli, “fragment of a field III – ribs. Across the room, I decided “fragment of a field VI –
9.120 µSv (07.05.09 – 21.07.09),” 9.120 µSv (07.05.09 – 21.07.09)” was a cheetah or a leopard.
backlight, radiographic negative I made out close-set eyes, a black, round nose, and whiskers.
Roesler)
In the best circumstances, X-rays offer clarity, a diagnosis, a
path to action. In the worst cases, they reveal danger, or
they are frustratingly inconclusive. However, Miceli isn’t diagnosing our ailments. For
anyone expecting this exhibition to reveal deeper truths about Chernobyl or nuclear
explosions, Projeto Chernobyl might feel like a letdown. But if you’re willing to view the
radiographs on their own terms, to see radiography as both a practical tool and a
potential art form, you’ll be richly rewarded.
Alice Miceli: Projeto Chernobyl continues at the Americas

Society (680 Park Avenue, Manhattan) through January 25,
2020. The exhibition was curated by Gabriela Rangel and Diana
Flatto.
Alice Miceli, “fragment of a roof I – 3.168

µSv (17.11.08 – 21.01.09)” (courtesy of
the artist and Galeria Nara Roesler)
https://hyperallergic.com/526464/an-artists-radiographic-photos-cast-new-light-on-chernobyl/ 2/3
1/8/2020 Projeto Chernobyl captures a post-human landscape on radiographic film - Archpaper.com
BLINDED ME WITH SCIENCE
Projeto Chernobyl captures a post-human landscape on radiographic

film
By MATTHEW MARANI • November 12, 2019
The project brought photographer Alice Miceli to the contaminated grounds of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. Chernobyl Exclusion Zone,
Radioactive Woods. (Courtesy of the artist, and Galeria Nara Roesler)
The Chernobyl Exclusion Zone has been devoid of human habitation for over three decades. Radiation
from the 1986 nuclear accident continues to saturate the borderlands of Ukraine and Belarus, rendering
thousands of square miles effectively nature preserves. The landscape has been immortalized through
countless photographic projects and television series, capturing a post-human ecosystem of abandoned
tower blocks and industrial facilities. Artist Alice Miceli’s Projeto Chernobyl, on display at the Americas
Society and curated by Gabriela Rangel and Diana Flatto, stands out from the standard documentation
approach with a series of 30 radiographic negatives that map gamma-ray exposure across multiple sites
within the exclusion zone.
Projeto Chernobyl began in 2006 and concluded in 2010. The location of the 12-by-16-inch radiographs
was determined by extensive mapping conducting by Miceli and her team, as the sheets were placed in
differing proximities to the failed Reactor No. 4 and exposed for two to eight months. Each, accordingly,
was subject to a unique degree of radioactive exposure. The result is a series of haunting abstracts of
manmade catastrophe and a post-human landscape.
https://archpaper.com/2019/11/projeto-chernobyl-radiographic-film-americas/ 1/4
The primary exhibition space is shrouded in darkness, with the sole source of illumination being the
backlit radiographic negatives. (Alice Miceli: Projeto Chernobyl at Americas Society/OnWhiteWall.com)
Considering the distinct approach to the project and the particularities of the location, it is no surprise that
Miceli depended on a unique photographic technique. The initial choice was a pinhole-like device; inside
of a lead-covered steel box, there would have been a smaller two-inch by two-inch lead square with a
minuscule pinhole to expose the radiographic film. Although this process succeeded in a lab-controlled
environment in Rio de Janeiro, it failed within the full-scale contamination of the Exclusion zone. The
second approach, what was ultimately used for the project, involved placing the autoradiographic film
directly onto radioactive matter, such as open fields, walls, windows, and trees.
“An autoradiograph, or autoradiogram, is an image imprinted on to a radiographic film that is produced by

the decay emissions (the gamma rays) from radioactive matter,” said Miceli. “The radiographic film is
placed in juxtaposition to, or in direct contact with, the contaminated matter, which in this case has
become a radioactive source (like most if not all contaminated matter in the Zone), thus producing life-size
images of the invisible contamination.”
The primary exhibition space has been designed as a void; Near pitch-black and accessed through a pair of
blackout curtains. The 30 radiograph negatives are mounted on five walls and backlit by LED screens and
are the only form of illumination within the room. Each of the negatives has a distinct mix of markings
which provide broad contours of the subject matter, and their geography of radiation contamination.
Natural phenomena such as rainfall and wear and tear resulted in further representational erratic, lending a
watercolor-like effect or abrasions to individual negatives.
The autoradiographs were placed directly onto their radioactive subject matter, revealing an abstract of
their contours and gamma-ray contamination. Alice Miceli fragment of a field V, backlit, radiographic
negative. (Courtesy of the artist and Galeria Nara Roesler)
The exhibition also includes a brief introduction to Miceli’s larger body of work, including In Depth, a
photographic series of active minefields in Bosnia, Angola, Cambodia, and Colombia. Black-and-white
film photography covering her travels from Germany to the Exclusion Zone is an additional supplement to
contextualize the exhibition.
Projeto Chernobyl
Americas Society
680 Park Avenue
New York, New York
Through January 25, 2020
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Matthew Marani
Program Manager, The Architect's Newspaper
Chernobyl Photography
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1/8/2020 Alice Miceli on her Chernobyl radiographs at the Americas Society – ARTnews.com
Home | Art in America
ALICE MICELI ON X- AYING CHERNOBYL

By Art in America
November 11, 2019 11:13am
VIEW GALLE Y
5 Images
Alice Miceli is a Brazilian artist and filmmaker who investigates how trauma can be embedded in a landscape through
experiments with photographic processes. From 2006 to 2010, the artist experimented with radiography—the creation of
images using radiation, most commonly used to take X-rays—to record the fallout from the 1986 nuclear disaster at
Chernobyl (https://www.artnews.com/t/chernobyl/). The thirty images that comprise her “Projeto Chernobyl” are on
view at the Americas Society in New York through January 25. Below, the artist explains how her radiographs were made.
https://www.artnews.com/art-in-america/interviews/alice-miceli-chernobyl-radiographs-americas-society-56497/ 1/3
1/8/2020 Alice Miceli on her Chernobyl radiographs at the Americas Society – ARTnews.com
The show opens with a few black-and-white, 35mm photographs I shot while working on the project. I was living in
Berlin at the time and regularly took the train to Chernobyl, taking photographs along the way. They serve more as my
visual diary than as part of the work itself.
“Projeto Chernobyl” is really a record of the site’s radioactivity, which is invisible to the naked eye and to conventional
photography (https://www.artnews.com/t/photography/). The landscape around Chernobyl doesn’t look radioactive
(https://www.artnews.com/t/radioactive/), but it has been permanently altered. To show this, I developed my own
process for making radiographs, first by working with physicists at a radiation institute in Rio de Janeiro. Their lab has
controlled radioactive sources, including cesium 137, which is the element most present in the Chernobyl contamination. I
built a model to replicate the conditions at Chernobyl, though things always work differently when you can control all of
the variables. After experimenting in the lab, I planned to expose the negatives to radioactivity for two weeks. But on site,
I realized it took much longer for images to appear, and began exposing them for a minimum of two, sometimes up to
eight, months. It took a while to iron out the process, but eventually, I was able to take multiple radiographs of the same
site and get similar results, which proved that the process was successfully recording the radiation. Some of the images
were taken using a lead pinhole camera, where I forced gamma rays to work like light and project a record of radiation
levels onto the negatives. Lead is one of few materials dense enough to stop the penetration of gamma radiation. But the
lead camera worked better in the lab than on-site, so at Chernobyl, I also exposed negatives by laying them directly onto
radioactive matter, such as trees, yielding a one-to-one imprint of the contamination. Many negatives I laid out were never
found again, or were ruined by rain, though in some cases the rain made beautiful radioactive watercolors.
For this show, I’m showing the negatives backlit in a dark gallery. Here, I wanted to display the actual matter that was
exposed in Chernobyl, not a print or a copy. I’ve only shown the negatives once before, in the 2010 São Paulo Bienal. In
the negatives, the dark areas indicate radiation. But there is another version of the work—a positive version, where the
light areas indicate radiation. The positives are contact prints, meaning the negative is exposed while laying directly on
photosensitive paper, not projected onto the paper using an enlarger. Since the celluloid negatives are already quite large
[117/8 x 15 ¾ inches], and some are life-size imprints of the radiation, I didn’t want to enlarge them.
Different objects—trees, rooftops—yield different patterns: you can see the texture of an open field in several of the
images that I shot with the pinhole camera. Some have a line running across them that looks like the horizon but actually
comes from contact with a metal frame I sometimes used to hold negatives still over the months that they took to record
radioactivity. Because there’s radiation everywhere—it’s even emitted by the sun—impressions are made on the film from
both sides, unlike in traditional photography. Sometimes in the radiographs you’ll see concentrated light areas: they’re
records of hot spots, which are radioactive particles that were embedded in a material’s surface during the accident. Those
spots pose severe risk for contamination if you touch them, but they’re completely invisible to the naked eye.
—As told to Emily Watlington
More From Art in America

Art in Amerca
Painter Michael Simpson Renders the Cruelties of Religion Using the

Strictures of Minimalism
Review of Michael Simpson's show at Blain Southern in London, featuring austere paintings that
capture the injustices of religion.
BY ELIZABETH FULLERTON
Art in Amerca
Keunmin Lee’s Hallucinatory Paintings Give Form to His Experience

of Mental Illness
https://www.artnews.com/art-in-america/interviews/alice-miceli-chernobyl-radiographs-americas-society-56497/ 2/3
1/8/2020 Three exhibitions to see in New York this weekend | The Art Newspaper
REVIEW THREE TO SEE
Three exhibitions to see in New York

this weekend
From Lempicka’s first US show in nearly six decades to
Jacolby Satterwhite’s intimate and immersive
environment
GABRIELLA ANGELETI and VANESSA THILL

10th October 2019 21:37 GMT
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Tamara de Lempicka's Les Jeunes Filles (circa 1930) is on view at Kosciuszko Projects. The work will be offered by Christie's
Christie's on 11 November in its Impressionist and Modern art evening sale. Images Ltd.
The Many Faces of Tamara de Lempicka at Kosciuszko Projects (until 1

November) is the first US exhibition devoted to the Polish artist since 1961,
and the debut exhibition of the Kosciuszko Foundation’s new project space
dedicated to Polish art. The show features paintings and drawings by de
Lempicka, a pioneer of the Art Deco style, as well as photographs, archival
materials and personal objects. According to the curator, Bartek Remisko,
the exhibition aims to “present a glimpse into the de Lempicka
phenomenon as it has come to be known since her critical re-evaluation
began in 1972”, when the artist had a major solo exhibition at the Galerie du
Luxembourg in Paris. “Only now, nearly one hundred years after the artist’s
debut, are we able to evaluate the work and artistic stature of Tamara de
Lempicka in 20th-century art, and not only her but also the wave of women
who overcame barriers in access to artistic education and to independent
careers,” Agnieszka Morawinska, the former director of the National
Museum in Warsaw, writes in the text accompanying the exhibition.
What does radiation look like? The exhibition Alice Miceli: Projeto
Chernobyl at the Americas Society (until 25 January 2020) presents 30
images that the Brazilian artist captured of the material using a method she
invented involving autoradiographic techniques and pinhole cameras.
Miceli captured the images from 2006 to 2010 in some of the most
contaminated areas of the Chernobyl exclusion zone in Belarus and
developed them through a months-long process in an abandoned hospital in
the area. The haunting black-and-white images, which are mounted in a
light box and viewed in a pitch-black gallery, suggest sinuous trails of smoke
within misty backdrops. The project captures what is normally invisible to
the naked eye and conventional photography to document the enduring
environmental contamination of the 1986 disaster at the Chernobul nuclear
plant. In an introductory video, the artist says she began the project out of
an interest in recording places that news coverage has forgotten about, or
places that are no longer “en vogue”.
In Jacolby Satterwhite’s exhibition You’re at Home at Pioneer Works

(until 24 November) in Brooklyn, the artist has made a sprawling industrial
space unexpectedly intimate. Floor-to-ceiling wallpaper and futuristic
cabinetry greet the viewer, with small monitors and colourfully gridded 3D-
printed sculptures tucked onto sleek shelves. Couches and plants evoke a
stylish living room, and a carpeted area displays Byausing The Art Newspaper
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texture to her lilting home-recorded lullabies, which also make up the
soundtracks for Satterwhite’s VR animations, viewable on headsets. A lush

world of dancers and twisting wires is equal parts hazy club memory and
cyberpunk fantasy. But the highlight of the show is a modest room
adjoining a disco-ball-bedecked dance floor. Framed drawings by Patricia
Satterwhite depict unrealised designs for futuristic garments and household
objects, all bearing lattice patterns that look like proto-digital structures.
This heartwarming tribute provides new insight into her son’s visionary
worldview.
More Review Topics Photography Pioneer Works Jacolby Satterwhite
Americas Society Kosciuszko Projects Tamara de Lempicka
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1/7/2020 Exhibition Review: Alice Miceli — Musée Magazine
OCT 9
Exhibition Review: Alice Miceli

REVIEW S (/CULTURE/CATEGORY/REVIEWS), EXHIBITION REVIEW (/CULTURE/CATEGORY/EXHIBITION+REVIEW )
Alice Miceli, Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, March 1986 Newspaper, Belarus, archival inkjet print, 2009. Courtesy of the artist and Galeria Nara Roesler.
By Charlie Breen (https://museemagazine.com/search?q=Charlie%20Breen)
Chernobyl and its nuclear fallout have been a source of fascination, intrigue, and fear for
the thirty-three years since the disaster. Mystery surrounds the area as radioactivity and
nature take over the abandoned towns within the site’s radius. Not only does this make
for some incredibly striking imagery, but it also makes Chernobyl a hazardous and toxic
place to visit. Yet we cannot see this radioactive poison that fills the air. In her exhibition,
Projeto Chernobyl, Alice Miceli shows us that there are other dimensions of photography
through which radioactivity can be viewed.
https://museemagazine.com/culture/2019/10/9/exhibition-review-alice-miceli-projeto-chernobyl 1/8
Alice Miceli, Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, Radioactive Woods, Belarus, archival inkjet print, 2008. Courtesy of the artist and Galeria Nara Roesler.
On display at Americas Society on Park Avenue, Projeto Chernobyl is the results of years
of work done by the artist. Miceli’s images capture the effects of radioactive gamma rays
on openly exposed film. However, not just any film could be used. In order to capture the
effects of gamma radiation, Miceli had to use radiographic film - film sensitive to
radiation typically used in medical examinations. More specifically, she decided to use
human chest X-ray film due to it being an extremely sensitive emulsion, designed to be
used with humans and so not meant for long exposures to radiation. While the results
are mixed in terms of how much certain film samples were exposed, they are utterly
fascinating. As are Miceli’s motivations and her process.
Alice Miceli, Fragment of a Ground I - 7.432 µSv (26.05.08 - 07.08.08) , backlight, radiographic negative. Courtesy of the artist and Galeria Nara Roesler.
Driven to capture “a representation of silence”, Miceli raises questions about the

consequences of radical progression and humanity’s negative impact on the
environment. While in Berlin she would trek eighteen to twenty-two hours by train to
Belarus, then to Chernobyl to place film in various spots. Many of these were lost,
however. Returning after months, Miceli would collect the exposed film to be brought
back for development of radiographs.
Alice Miceli, Fragment of a Ground IV - 9.120 µSv (07.05.09 - 21.07.09) , backlight, radiographic negative. Courtesy of the artist and Galeria Nara
Roesler.
The final products are intriguing. Varying levels of radiation and exposure leave a diverse
mix of blotches, streaks, waves and patterns. Different film samples have been subject
to different levels of gamma radiation and natural elements. Some have been exposed to
water, thus creating a watercolor effect, some have taken on a fiery mosaic, while others
bare their scratches and grooves from wear and tear. In many of the radiographs,
intensely dark spots stand out in lighter shades of radiation. Miceli explains that these
spots are the result of hot clusters of higher concentrations of gamma radiation attaching
to the film. While the series of radiographs clearly displays the movement of radiation
there is not much of a consistent pattern to behold, adding to the malevolent beauty of
the radioactive shadows.
Alice Miceli: ‘Projeto Chernobyl’ at Americas Society, October 9, 2019-January 25, 2020. Photo by OnWhiteWall.com
Alongside Miceli’s radiographs, attendees are provided with an informative book

containing some more traditional photographs from her travels back and forth to
Chernobyl from Berlin, as well as an interview with the artist and an exhibition checklist
of all the radiographs. Before entering dark space of the exhibition patrons can also view
a documentary about Miceli’s work with Projeto Chernobyl and In Depth - a series where
she photographed minefields in Angola, Bosnia, Cambodia and Columbia.
Exhibition Review: Alice Miceli — Musée Magazine 07/01/20 16(29
Alice Miceli: ‘Projeto Chernobyl’ at Americas Society, October 9, 2019-January 25, 2020. Photo by OnWhiteWall.com
Alice Miceli’s exhibition will be on display at Americas Society until January 25, 2020.
She will also be giving a talk at the gallery on October 15, and on October 22 Americas
Society will host a panel discussion entitled, ‘Invisible Threats: Human Rights, The
Environment, and Art. More details Americas Society’s upcoming events and Miceli’s
exhibition can be found here (https://www.as-coa.org).
ADM INIST RAT OR (/ CULT URE?AUTH O R=5 7 0 2B75 75 57 72 51 A 8A D 7 DA D 1)
Alice Miceli (/culture/tag/Alice+Miceli), Projeto Chernobyl

(/culture/tag/Projeto+Chernobyl), Chernobyl (/culture/tag/Chernobyl), Americas Society
(/culture/tag/Americas+Society)
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 
"PROJETO CHERNOBYL": A SPEECH ON INVISIBLE VIOLENCE

The Americas Society gallery in New York City inaugurates Alice Miceli: Projeto Chernobyl, a
photographic project by Brazilian artist Alice Miceli (1980) that explores the effects of the nuclear
crisis in the Ukrainian city. Under the curatorship of Gabriela Rangel ―artistic director of the
Museum of Latin American Art of Buenos Aires (MALBA) and the Visual Arts Department director
at the Americas Society― and Diana Flatto ―assistant curator of the Americas Society― the
exhibition exhibits thirty radiographs that document the invisible leftovers of the explosion.
By Matías Helbig
 
The images produced by Miceli are dated in the 2006-2010 period, twenty years after the Chernobyl
tragedy. In order to add a more complete view of the impacts of the nuclear explosion in the city, both
socially and naturally, the artist created a photographic technique with the ability to record gamma
radiation ―type of electromagnetic radiation that nuclear explosions produce. In this way, the
Chernobyl Project adds, from an absolutely new language, a sui generis le regarding one of the most
shocking events of the twentieth century. A le where the invisible impact becomes image.
“In Chernobyl, where the de ning quality of the environment is the invisible radioactive contamination,
which is pervasive but not perceived by our senses, the question of the project became: ‘How to look,
and by what means?’” Miceli explained. “I see the act of walking through impenetrable spaces as a form
of resistance. It’s not condoning any of the actions that created these spaces; on the contrary, it’s a
form of counteraction that confronts them. I’m speci cally trying to access and offer a point of view
from within the land that has been occupied,” she added.
The project was carried out over four years in which Miceli entered to Chenobyl’s exclusion zone. Given
the impact that radiation has on any living organism, the production of the photographs was forced to
develop in isolated periods. The language adopted to represent the tragedy embodies the hostility of
the environment and its occupation: Miceli crosses the documentary discipline with the visual language
of artistic photography and constructs an essential narrative to understand the degree of violence of
the events that led to the explosion.

 

Alice Miceli's artistic production constantly revolves around the interpellation of geographies damaged
by human power structures. “She has a unique niche in her research on questions that affect our bodies
in a biopolitical manner. She’s one of the few artists concerned with the militarization of the world in the
bodies and minds of people today,” holds Rangel.
Finally, it is important to observe this Brazilian artist artwork as a complementary speech to that of
contemporary artists such as Adrián Villar Rojas, Lara Almarcegui, Tomás Saraceno or Julian Charrière,
who develop their oeuvre based on the concept of Anthropocene, the appropriation and exploitation of
natural resources and abuse of private and state structures within that context. It is in this frame
Miceli's work gives voice to the violence of political orders and the indiscriminate management of those
regarding the communities (human and non-human) that inhabit the regions where they operate.
Copyright©2003-2019 Arte al Día. All rights reserved

EVENTS
Your Concise New York Art

Guide for Fall 2019
Your list of must-see, fun, insightful, and very New York art
events this season.
Hyperallergic September 10, 2019
As always, there are many wonderful

exhibitions, film festivals, and art
events taking place throughout the fall
in New York. We’ve put together our
recommendations, and hope that they
encourage you to explore the artistic
happenings of this great city. Focusing
on museums, art nonprofits, and
galleries that continue to make New
York a global hub of the arts, we hope
you’ll push yourself to discover
something new.
Amy Sherald, “Handsome” (2019) (©
Amy Sherald, courtesy the artist and * * *
Hauser & Wirth)
After the End: Timing Socialism in Contemporary African Art
When: June 15–October 6

Where: Wallach Art Gallery (Lenfest Center for the Arts, Columbia University,
615 West 129th Street, Upper West Side, Manhattan)
Weather Report
When: October 6, 2019–March 29, 2020

Where: The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum (258 Main Street, Ridgefield,
Connecticut)
A diverse group of international artists grapple with the topic of weather through
sculpture, drawing, painting, installation, and video. Weather Report means to
show how the subject is connected to climate change, its emotional effects on
people, and how and weather impacts history and politics. The exhibition will
feature a one-day cross-disciplinary symposium with meteorologists, researchers,
and artists.
Alice Miceli: Projeto Chernobyl
When: October 9, 2019–January 25, 2020

Where: Americas Society (680 Park Avenue, Upper East Side, Manhattan)
Miceli will display a series of 30 radiographs produced between 2006 and 2010.
These images document the persistent effects of the Soviet nuclear plant
explosion of 1986 through a method the artist developed that uses film as a
record of the gamma radiation still present in the area. By making this pernicious
force visible and legible the artist evokes how and under what conditions our
vision can intersect with our memory, politics, and our sense of what constitutes
our environment.
Garrett Bradley’s America: A Journey Through Race and Time
When: October 11–17

Where: BAM Rose Cinema (30 Lafayette Ave, Brooklyn)
In this unique program, BAM will showcase Garrett Bradley’s revelatory new
short “America,” a work that creates a joyous alternative history of African-
American representation on screen. For this week-long special presentation,
Bradley’s insightful vision is paired with seven different programs, each offering
a unique prism through which to consider the history and future possibilities of
Blackness in American cinema. Plus there will be a program of Bradley’s early
short films, and a discussion event: “BAM and Black Portraiture[s]: Responding
to Garrett Bradley’s America.”
The Pencil Is a Key

Americas Society Presents Alice Miceli: Projeto Chernobyl
Alice Miceli, Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, Radioactive Woods, Belarus, archival inkjet print, 2008. Courtesy of the
artist and Galeria Nara Roesler.
September 17, 2019
Alice Miceli: Projeto Chernobyl
On view at Americas Society from October 9, 2019 through January 25, 2020
Curated by Gabriela Rangel and Diana Flatto
Press Preview: By appointment only. October 3, 4 & 8 from 10am – 12pm.
Opening Reception: Monday, October 7, 6:00-8:00 p.m.
Press Inquiries: mediarelations@as-coa.org | 1-212-277-8333
Follow the discussion on social media: #ChernobylAS
Lea en español.
Leia em portugues.
New York, September 17, 2019 —Americas Society presents Alice Miceli: Projeto Chernobyl, a series of 30
radiographs produced in 2006-2010 and documenting the residual effects of the 1986 Ukrainian nuclear plant
explosion. The exhibition, curated by Gabriela Rangel (Artistic Director, Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de
Buenos Aires and former Chief Curator and Director, Visual Arts, Americas Society) and Diana Flatto
(Assistant Curator, Americas Society), is the first to bring the series Projeto Chernobyl (Chernobyl Project), by
Brazilian artist Alice Miceli (b. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 1980), to the United States.
Miceli developed a method of image-making to capture the environmental contamination resulting from the
April 26, 1986 disaster. Though gamma radiation continues to be present, it is invisible to the naked eye and to
traditional methods of photography that have been used to document the region’s ruins. With her innovative
radiographic technique, the artist makes the destructive energy visible via direct contact between the radiation
and her film, which was exposed in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone for months at a time.
“In Chernobyl, where the defining quality of the environment is the invisible radioactive contamination, which
is pervasive but not perceived by our senses, the question of the project became: ‘How to look, and by what
means?’” Miceli commented, “I see the act of walking through impenetrable spaces as a form of resistance. It’s
not condoning any of the actions that created these spaces; on the contrary, it’s a form of counteraction that
confronts them. I’m specifically trying to access and offer a point of view from within the land that has been
occupied.”
The work considers our world in a new way within lineages of documentary photography and abstraction.
“Alice Miceli’s work is very unusual and rare within the narratives of Latin American art,” said Rangel. “She
has a unique niche in her research on questions that affect our bodies in a biopolitical manner. She’s one of the
few artists concerned with the militarization of the world in the bodies and minds of people today.”
The original radiographic negatives are presented as a complete series in light boxes embedded within the walls
of the otherwise dark gallery. In addition to the illuminated two-gallery installation, the exhibition comprises a
selection of documentary photographs taken by the artist on journeys to the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone in 2008
and 2009, and a video interview with the artist, including footage of the radiographs’ placement and
descriptions of her experimental research leading to the radiograph format. Both technically and conceptually
complex, Miceli’s work questions our ideas of vision, memory, and trauma.
“Miceli’s work is increasingly relevant today in Brazil, Latin America, and the rest of the world,” said co-
curator Diana Flatto. “It raises pressing issues about clean energy and the environment that go beyond the
specific moment or place as we are witnessing destruction of the Amazon, depletion of natural resources, and
broader climate change.”
Rather than recording the historical moment of the disaster in Chernobyl, Miceli captured the energy that
endures and will haunt the atmosphere of Belarus and the Ukraine for thousands of years. She terms the areas of
her research “impenetrable spaces” where she documents landscapes rendered dangerous by militarization and
industrialization.
Alice Miceli: Projeto Chernobyl unearths the layers behind nuclear disaster—a continuous threat to human and
environmental safety. Miceli questions the military, economic, and political contexts of damaged landscapes
like the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, inviting a confrontation of the history of our society.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a fully illustrated publication including an interview between the co-
curators and the artist.
The presentation of Alice Miceli: Projeto Chernobyl is made possible by public funds from the New York City
Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, and by the generous support from Galeria
Nara Roesler.
Additional support comes from The Cowles Charitable Trust, the Garcia Family Foundation and the Consulate
General of Brazil in New York.
Americas Society gratefully acknowledges the support from the Arts of the Americas Circle members: Estrellita
Brodsky; Galeria Almeida e Dale; Kaeli Deane; Diana Fane; Isabella Hutchinson; Carolina Jannicelli; Vivian
Pfeiffer and Jeanette van Campenhout, Phillips; Luis Oganes; Roberto Redondo; Erica Roberts; Sharon
Schultz; Herman Sifontes; and Edward J. Sullivan.
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Americas Society Apresenta Alice Miceli: Projeto Chernobyl

Am Clipping Chernobyl As 2019

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alice miceli

Uncanny Landscapes: Alice Miceli Interviewed by Louis Bury

NYT Recommends Alice Miceli’s Projeto Chernobyl at Americas

The Photographer Who X-Raying Chernobyl

An Artist’s Radiographic Photos Cast New Light on Chernobyl

Projeto Chernobyl Captures a Post-Human Landscape on

Alice Miceli on X-rayind Chernobyl

Three Exhibitions to See in New York this Weekend

Exhibition Review: Alice Miceli

“Projeto Chernobyl”: a Speech on Invisible Violence

Your Concise New York Art Guide for Fall 2019

Uncanny Landscapes: Alice Miceli

Alice Miceli, fragment of a window II—2.494 µSv (21.01.09–07.04.09), backlight, radiographic

Installation view of Alice Miceli: Projeto Chernobyl at Americas Society. Photo by

Alice Miceli, fragment of a ﬁeld V—9.120 µSv (07.05.09–21.07.09), backlight, radiographic

photography process Chernobyl mineﬁelds

First Order of Decay by Amy Benson

What to See Right Now in New

‘Artist in Exile: The Visual Diary of Baroness Hyde de Neuville’

The Photographer Who

What inspired you to go to Chernobyl and attempt to document its

What was your first impression of Chernobyl?

How did you decide where to place the radiographic plates?

Can you describe how your radiographs were made?

What was the most challenging aspect of your project?

This interview was edited for length and clarity.

E N E RGY NUCLEAR D I S A ST E R S P H OTO G R A P H Y V I S UA L

An Artist’s Radiographic Photos Cast New Light on

Alice Miceli photographed the Chernobyl Exclusion

Projeto Chernobyl, a selection of 30 radiographs now on view at The Americas Society,

Visitors hoping for more information about Chernobyl itself

In “fragment of a wooden wall III – 2.236 µSv (21.01.09 –

Even when it’s not being used for human X-rays,

Alice Miceli: Projeto Chernobyl continues at the Americas

Alice Miceli, “fragment of a roof I – 3.168

BLINDED ME WITH SCIENCE

Projeto Chernobyl captures a post-human landscape on radiographic

“An autoradiograph, or autoradiogram, is an image imprinted on to a radiographic film that is produced by

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

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ALICE MICELI ON X- AYING CHERNOBYL

—As told to Emily Watlington

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Exhibition Review: Alice Miceli

By Charlie Breen (https://museemagazine.com/search?q=Charlie%20Breen)

Driven to capture “a representation of silence”, Miceli raises questions about the

Alongside Miceli’s radiographs, attendees are provided with an informative book

ADM INIST RAT OR (/ CULT URE?AUTH O R=5 7 0 2B75 75 57 72 51 A 8A D 7 DA D 1)

Alice Miceli (/culture/tag/Alice+Miceli), Projeto Chernobyl