Date
Spring 2026
Exhibit Images
Thesis Committee Chair
Jill AnnieMargaret, MFA
Thesis Committee Members
Astri Snodgrass, MFA
Lily Lee, MFA
Artist's Statement
This project examines containment as an ongoing condition that structures domestic, ecological, and industrial life in the nuclear age. Drawing from Ulrich Beck’s concept of “risk society,” the work explores how systems of care emerge through maintenance, repetition, and the management of unresolved hazards across generations. Using crochet sculpture, filet crochet, printmaking, scent, and video, the installation investigates the persistence of radioactive waste and the impossibility of fully containing its effects.
Centered on the legacy of the Hanford Site in eastern Washington, where plutonium for the Nagasaki bomb was produced, the work considers how nuclear infrastructure binds bodies, landscapes, and ecosystems through long-term exposure and inherited responsibility. Crochet functions as both material and metaphor: its porous, interdependent structure mirrors systems of care that persist despite their insufficiency to contain violence on the scale of radioactive decay. Across the work, domestic aesthetics are placed in tension with industrial and ecological harm, revealing the permeability of bodies, homes, and environments.
Rather than depicting catastrophe as singular or exceptional, the project frames nuclear risk as embedded within everyday life. It asks how we continue living within systems that cannot be fully repaired, and what it means to inherit their unresolved residue across generations.
Recommended Citation
Nealon, Chloe, "Risk Society" (2026). 2026 MFA Visual Arts. 1.
https://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/mfa_artists_2026/1
video transcript
Additional Information
Video component: Reticulation (4 min. 48 sec.)