A new exhibition at the Ent Center for the Arts in Colorado Springs is offering residents an up-close look at one of the world's most remote preservation efforts. Artist Dornith Doherty traveled to the Arctic Circle in Norway to photograph the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, described as humanity's last resort in the event of ecological devastation.
Part of Doherty's project, titled "Archiving Eden," is currently displayed inside the Ent Center and is one of three pieces featured in the gallery's "Simulacra" exhibition. Doherty took X-ray photographs of seedlings and rendered them as larger-than-life lenticular prints, which change color and brightness depending on the viewer's angle.
The exhibition also includes Bill Viola's 1979 visual piece "Moving Stillness" and Etsuko Ichikawa's "Broken Poems of Fireflies." Viola's work presents a digital projection of Mt. Rainier above a pool of water that becomes distorted and abstracted when the water's surface is disturbed. Ichikawa's contribution is rooted in the Fukushima reactor meltdown disaster; she created blown glass orbs filled with uranium glass material to draw a parallel to the uranium used in the reactor before its catastrophic failure following the 2011 earthquake and tsunami.
The exhibition is open Thursday through Saturday from 1 to 6 p.m., with extended hours ahead of Theatreworks performances, and appointments can be scheduled outside of regular hours. Admission is free.
It was not confirmed in available sources how long the "Simulacra" exhibition is scheduled to run, and visitors are encouraged to check with the Ent Center for the Arts for the closing date and any updates to gallery hours.