“Sensing Toxicity: Art, Environmental Justice and Contaminated Geographies, 1980s–present”

Joseph Michael Sussi, PhD candidate, History of Art and Architecture, and 2023–24 Dissertation Fellow. My dissertation analyzes how contemporary artists Kim Abeles, Karin Bolender, and Beatriz Santiago Muñoz, use bodily sensing to make toxicity legible and to reveal the entanglements between places and pollution. Artists producing multi-sensory work can uniquely step beyond the boundaries that delimit policy formation and scientific research thus allowing for more nuanced and critical investigations of environmental violence. Sensing toxicity with these artists reveals how corporeality and culture are linked through the experience of contaminated geographies.