Alison Neville: M.A.D.

M.A.D. (Mutually Assured Destruction) consists of two parts: a mixed media sculpture series and a coloring book. Both explore how governments are perfecting a means to kill through nuclear testing programs and simultaneously inform their people through public education programs. The testing is done as a means of protecting the people but the end result is a mutated global foreign policy.

The sculpture series serves to relate information about different test sites from the programs conducted by the United States, Russia, and North Korea. There is a map for each location and a mushroom for every above-ground, fallout-generating, nuclear weapon test in the history of each program, all built on Cold War-era desks.

The coloring book contains imagery of the nuclear weapon detonations that have been colored in with the collaboration of children ages five to twelve. While many of them are fanciful interpretations now, their significance will emerge in time.