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Gang Bang at the WIPP Site [from the series Nuclear Waste(d)]
Gang Bang at the WIPP Site [from the series Nuclear Waste(d)]
Gang Bang at the WIPP Site [from the series Nuclear Waste(d)]

Gang Bang at the WIPP Site [from the series Nuclear Waste(d)]

Artist (American, born 1939)
Date1989
Mediumsprayed acrylic, oil and photography on photolinen
DimensionsCanvas: 16 × 20 × 3/4 in. (40.6 × 50.8 × 1.9 cm)
Frame: 21 1/2 × 25 3/8 × 1 3/4 in. (54.6 × 64.5 × 4.4 cm)
ClassificationsPainting
Credit LineGift of Judy Chicago and Donald Woodman, 2011
Object number2011.11.6
DescriptionA painting on a photograph that pictures the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant with five pairs of workers holding extendable “hands” that hold long tubes out of which waste spills and seeps into the ground. The words “gang rape” are scrawled in red paint at the bottom.
Text Entries
In the Nuclear Waste(d) series, Judy Chicago addresses the negative consequences of the nuclear industry in New Mexico, the birthplace of the atomic bomb. These are collaborative works that employ photographs by Donald Woodman of various nuclear-related sites throughout the state, that were then painted on by Judy Chicago. Among the sites the series addresses are the Trinity Site, where the first atomic bomb was detonated; Grants, where much of the uranium was mined for the bombs, causing great health and environmental problems for the Native Americans upon whose lands the mines are located; and WIPP, the waste site in southern New Mexico. Gang Bang at the WIPP Site pictures the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in Carlsbad, New Mexico, which is shown disposing of radioactive waste into the earth. Chicago’s language of violation references a violence done to the land, imagined as a female body (Mother Earth), by the radioactivity.
Per email dated 9/20/2011 in accession file, title should read "Gang Bang at the WIPP Site".
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