Buffalo, NY – The Albright-Knox Art Gallery recently opened a new exhibition titled Operation Sunshine by artist Joan Linder (American, born 1970) in its Clifton Hall Link. The exhibition highlights Linder’s most recent body of work, which explores toxic waste sites in Buffalo, Tonawanda, and Niagara Falls, New York, and the documents related to such precarious properties.

Linder’s initial focus was the Love Canal neighborhood along the Niagara River. During the 1940s, the Hooker Chemical Company dumped more than 20,000 tons of toxic waste on what would become this thirty-six-square block locale. In 1978, the extreme ill health of its residents came to light, and subsequently families were forced out of their homes and the community was demolished. Following a Superfund cleanup by the United States Environmental Protection Agency, what remains visible is a wasteland of grass-covered mounds surrounded by a chain-link fence.

In 2013, Linder parked her car on the street outside the fenced-in area and started drawing. As her work progressed, she began spending time in libraries and historical societies reviewing documents related to the region. The University at Buffalo’s archives, which hold numerous collections related to environmental issues throughout Western New York, proved especially important.

“Her tenacity has resulted in a considerable visual archive of beautifully rendered, scaled, and detailed images of the remains of the landscape, as well as redrawn and aged copies of historical and propagandist documents,” said Godin-Spaulding Curator & Curator for the Collection Holly Hughes. “Through practiced surveillance and the medium of drawing, Linder reveals the region’s disturbing past and uncertain future.”

Joan Linder is an Associate Professor in the Department of Art at the University at Buffalo. She has shown her work throughout the United States and in Brazil, Denmark, Germany, Israel, Japan, and South Korea.

Operation Sunshine is Linder’s first solo museum exhibition. It contains more than ninety works, some of which were created specifically for this show. The exhibition is organized by Godin-Spaulding Curator & Curator for the Collection Holly E. Hughes, and will be on view until October 30.

This project has been supported by Faculty Fellowships at the University at Buffalo’s Humanities Institute and Techne Institute for Arts and Emerging Technologies and residencies at Yaddo in Saratoga Springs, New York, and the Montalvo Arts Center in Saratoga, California.

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