Auto Immune Response #2

Part of the artist’s larger installation envisioning the life of a survivor of the apocalypse, this image shows three views of a lone Diné (Navajo) man wearing a breathing apparatus in a world hostile to human habitation. Making his way to the rim of the Grand Canyon at dawn, he faces east and makes an offering of corn pollen with his morning prayers, seeking harmony in a beautiful but inhospitable environment.

“The series is an allegorical investigation of the extraordinarily rapid transformation of Indigenous lifeways, the dis-ease it has caused, and strategies of response that enable cultural survival,” Wilson writes. His project is sometimes realized in three dimensions with an installation of a hogan (traditional dwelling) greenhouse, the Auto Immune Response Research Facility, where Indigenous food plants are grown. Wilson sees the series itself as “a pollinator,” intended to foster other challenges to prevailing social, cultural, and environmental systems.