Will Wilson: Auto Immune Response

May 6, 2006–September 24, 2006

New York, NY

As a photographer and installation artist, Will Wilson (Diné/Bilagaana, b. 1969) creates a deliberate counter narrative to romantic visions of Native people living in an unchanging past. Though born in San Francisco, he draws inspiration from the many years he spent living on the Navajo Reservation as a child.

In Auto Immune Response, Wilson offers a powerful vision of a postapocalyptic future. This imagined environment includes comforting symbols of cultural persistence, such as a hogan (a traditional Navajo dwelling), coexisting with computers, wires, and futuristic furnishings. By constructing a steel hogan in the gallery, Wilson transforms the visitor from observer to participant. Enveloped by the artist's landscape, we are asked to consider our own place in the universe and, as exhibition curator Joe Baker from the Heard Museum states, "the complex environmental and social issues that are a consequence of contemporary society."

Will Wilson: Auto Immune Response was organized by the Heard Museum, Phoenix, Arizona, and curated by Joe Baker (Delaware Tribe of Indians), Lloyd Kiva New Curator of Fine Art.