Fia Backström: The Great Society

Fia Backström's The Great Society explores how communities take shape and survive in the face of converging environmental and extractive crises. Based on extensive field research in West Virginia beginning in 2017, the exhibition features multiple components including a photographic series, large-scale installation titled 'Sacrifice Zone' with hand-manipulated prints on transparent film, an embroidery circle with Buffalo Creek community members as an act of bearing witness, and video work. The exhibition weaves together testimonies from folk medicine practitioners, scholars on faith and dam regulation, strip mining activists, and explores the historical context of the 1972 Buffalo Creek mine disaster.