Andrew Roibal — theBASEMENT

the BASEMENT

Publication #04

Our New Monastery

Andrew Roibal

Polaroid Photomontage

2024

Through all my artwork, I conceptualize each idea against a backdrop of imperialism, American consumerism, and contemporary art movements in photography. I think of how I can best utilize photography as a medium to bring light to these unique ideas about the world that I have developed over time. How can I communicate Indigenous displacement to others that don't share my background?

My project, Other Worlds I, attempts to answer the first question. An imagined “atomic priesthood” as described in a 1993 Sandia National Laboratory Report safeguards a nuclear waste site on Native lands far into the future. Massive hostile architecture structures depicted from hand-made miniatures according to details of the same report are mixed with life-sized portraiture. I present fictional worlds that seem real through the use of polaroid photo montage. Reflecting on our own world in the process of realizing a new one is a core passion of my practice. I choose to use photography as my primary medium because it allows me to contextualize real people, objects, and landscapes into my imagined, constructed worlds. By photographing these landscapes on traditional Native lands I am taking them back and warning others of what could become of our land if little care is given to such important tasks such as nuclear waste disposal.

concentration: Photo/Media

@AndrewRoibalArtworks

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