A video installation focusing on the conflicts between civilization and nature Mary Lucier’s video installation Wilderness (1986) remains one of her best-known works, an exploration of how culture and technology shape the way nature is understood. Comprising seven cathode ray televisions mounted on faux classical pedestals in a stepped colonnade, the installation plays three synchronized, twenty-one-minute videos of “the wilderness,” including shots of forests, streams, seascapes, early American domestic interiors, and a fox hunt, interspersed with glimpses of railroads and factories. The compositions are informed by 19th-century American landscape painting motifs, and the central, lowest plinth emulates a classically decorated garden urn.
Wilderness was commissioned by the Rose Art Museum of Brandeis University and traveled to MOCA and nine other museums.
Wilderness was organized by Julie Lazar, Project Coordinator, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.