Join us for the opening reception of Glyphosate Dreams, a multimedia art exhibition by the 2023 UCSF Artist in Residence, Katina Bitsicas. The reception will be held on the main floor of the UCSF Kalmanovitz Library on the Parnassus Heights campus and will include an overview of the exhibition and a conversation with the artist.

This exhibition visually translates the destructive herbicide glyphosate into chemically deteriorated images and an interactive augmented reality (AR) experience reflecting on its consequences to body and land. Throughout Katina's residency at UCSF, she reviewed the Roundup Litigation Documents within the UCSF Industry Documents Library to select the most poignant parts of the email exchanges between the Environmental Protection Agency and Monsanto. She included the written exchanges in her photographic project where she used glyphosate to physically deteriorate C-prints over time as they were buried in the ground. Additionally, she used images from her personal archive of her family’s land that underwent the same treatment and process. The results of these prints varied from partially deteriorated, highlighting specific sections of the print, to completely disintegrated, leaving behind a ghost-like image.

Additional components of the exhibition

An augmented reality (AR) project then takes the patterns created by the deterioration process and animates them into a virtual work, enabling the viewer to place the deterioration on top of their inhabited land to visualize the detrimental effects instantly. A series of letterpress prints also feature the deterioration patterns from the glyphosate-treated images and segments of a lake depth map of Burt Lake, a frequented fishing spot in northern Michigan. The letterpress prints comment on the effects herbicides have on our aquatic ecosystems. The deterioration patterns conceal and highlight various indication symbols on the map, that guide the viewer.

The exhibition opening is open to UCSF ID badge holders and admission is FREE.

UCSF welcomes everyone, including people with disabilities to our events. To request a reasonable accommodation for this event, please contact Makers Lab Manager, Dylan Romero by emailing dylan.romero@ucsf.edu as soon as possible.

Questions?

Contact the Makers Lab if you have questions about this event.

Image credit: Katina Bitsicas (2023). Glyphosate Dreams [Glyphosate treated C-print from personal archive, 30”x40”].