Artist Talk: Roger Peet – Dig Up The Sun
The exhibition Between Fires traces the intertwined histories of nuclear infrastructures, colonialism and resistance, beginning in the Northern Kazakh steppe around Semey, which the Soviet Union used for their nuclear programme between 1948 and 1991, causing long-lasting effects of pollution and radiation of water, land, humans and non-human animals.
From this place, Between Fires reaches to other regional perspectives and landscapes that bear histories of the nuclear. Roger Peet’s print Dig Up The Sun (2022) traces and connects the path, through time and place, of the atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Peet’s map covers a vast geography: from the uranium of the Shinkolobwe mine in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, through the Trinity Test Site in New Mexico, to numerous enrichment facilities, plants and docks before their detonation in Japan. It takes an extraordinary amount of infrastructure, resources and people to create a nuclear weapon. While the vastness of it might dazzle, Peet’s map is foldable; we have to grasp and carry these paths of violence and destruction in order to resist them.
The purity and concentration of Shinkolobwe ore were critical to the rapid success of the Manhattan Project, and due to the state secrecy surrounding the atomic bomb, the Congolese workers who made the weapon possible have been excised from history. Contamination from Shinkolobwe uranium affects sites across the USA.
Roger Peet is an artist, printmaker, muralist and writer living in Portland, Oregon. His visual work focuses on civilized bad ideas, predator-prey relationships and the contemporary crises of biodiversity and Capitalism and what can and can’t be done about them. His writing addresses the politics and history of social relationships with the natural world. He is a founding member of the Justseeds Artists’ Cooperative and helps to run the cooperative Flight 64 print studio in Portland. He collaborates with artists, organisers and scientists globally and locally in the service of a more generous and a wilder world.
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LocationFramer Framed
Oranje-Vrijstaatkade 71
1093KS, Amsterdam
This event is in English. Admission is free, pay what you can.
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This event may be photographed and filmed. Kindly let us know in advance if you prefer not to have your picture taken. For seated programmes, places are always made available for wheelchair users. Please speak to the host before the programme begins.
Between Fires: Irradiated Imaginations and Anti-Nuclear Solidarities is curated by Fabienne Rachmadiev and on show at Framer Framed until 17 May 2026. The exhibition is commissioned and produced by Framer Framed and presented in partnership with Sonic Acts as part of Sonic Acts Biennial 2026.
Framer Framed is supported by the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science; Amsterdam Fund for the Arts; Municipality of Amsterdam; and VriendenLoterij Fonds.
