Stacey Spiegel
Canadian, b. 1955
Reactor Core, 1991
Pyrex, aluminum, steel, seeds
152.4 x 121.9 x 121.9 cm
Collection of the Winnipeg Art Gallery; Gift of Leah Myers
2006-52.1 to 41
Categories:
Installation, Canadian Contemporary (1980-present)
Reactor Core expresses the connection Stacey Spiegel has been exploring over a number of years between nature and culture. This work is a memorial, in a time of apparent and overt environmental carnage. Acting as a time capsule it preserves the genetically altered seeds used in commercial agriculture since the early 1990s. The sculpture questions what cultivating food will be like, and what alternative food, health, and medicine will become in the future. In a nuclear reactor the slim rods, known as fuel pins, are filled with fuel pellets. Borrowing its title and composition from the creation of nuclear energy, this work evokes the potential we possess to create life as well as destroy it. Minimalist in its construction, the work’s underlying concept embodies the global ramifications of this human power.
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