Simulacra
(or, The Persistence of Nature in an Age of Mediation)
Dornith Doherty, Etsuko Ichikawa, Bill Viola
June 26 - October 10, 2026
Marie Walsh Sharpe and Project Space Galleries
Ent Center for the Arts
Simulacra (or, The Persistence of Nature in an Age of Mediation)
Dornith Doherty, Etsuko Ichikawa, and Bill Viola
In a time when ecosystems are increasingly shaped by human activity, many of our encounters with nature take place through images, technologies, and systems of preservation. Simulacra (or, the Persistence of Nature in an Age of Mediation) brings together three artists who examine how the natural world continues to assert itself through these conditions—refracted rather than erased.
Bill Viola’s Moving Stillness: Mount Rainier 1979 slows perception to the pace of disturbance and repair, revealing a landscape that fractures and reforms through light, time, and reflection. Etsuko Ichikawa’s Broken Poems of Fireflies transforms the glow of fireflies into irradiated glass, holding wonder beside the legacies of nuclear technology. Dornith Doherty’s seed images from Archiving Eden render preservation visible, animating seeds held in scientific care as fragile carriers of future possibility.
Rather than opposing nature and mediation, the exhibition considers how images, archives, and engineered materials have become sites where ecological attention now occurs. These works do not present nature as pristine or intact, but as resilient, persisting through systems that both threaten and sustain it. What emerges is a quieter form of hope: one grounded in endurance, care, and continued relation.
Title image: Dornith Doherty, Seedling Cabinet I, II, III. Digital Chromogenic Lenticular Prints, 2019. 62 x 42” each
GOCA celebrates the generous sponsors who help bring bold contemporary art to life in our community:
CDR Patrick Sheehy, USN in Memory of Janine K. Sheehy; The September 7th Fund, Established by Ben and Raynelle Kuckel; and Summer and Tobias Kircher
IMPORTANT DATES
Exhibition On-View:
June 26 - October 10, 2026
Opening Reception:
Friday, June 26, 2026, 5-8pm
Marie Walsh Sharpe Gallery
*FREE Admission, no registration needed
VACS Lecture with Dornith Doherty:
Thursday, September 3rd, 2026, 6-7 pm
Chapman Recital Hall
*registration required, free tickets available below
VACS Lecture with Etsuko Ichikawa:
Friday, June 26th, 2026, 6-7 pm
Chapman Recital Hall
*registration required, free tickets available below
Gallery hours:
Thursday - Saturday, 1 - 6 p.m., or by appointment
email: gallery@uccs.edu | call: 719-255-3504
About the Artists
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Dornith Doherty
A 2012 Guggenheim Foundation Fellow, Dornith Doherty works primarily with photography, video, animations, works on paper, and scientific imaging. In projects that interweave the evidentiary and metaphoric powers of photographic images, Doherty illuminates ecological and philosophical issues that are often neglected when considering human entanglements in the environment. This has led to her many collaborations with scientists, archives, botanical centers, and research institutes concentrating on environmental themes to create artworks that use the beautiful intricacy of the natural world to inspire conversations around, and support for, the protection of a distant and unknowable future.
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Etsuko Ichikawa
Born in Tokyo, Japan, Ichikawa came to the U.S. to attend Pilchuck Glass School in 1993 and worked for Dale Chihuly as a studio assistant for eight years. Her work has been exhibited internationally, including The Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Seattle Art Museum, 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art in Kanazawa, The Ueno Royal Museum in Tokyo, and The Eretz Israel Museum in Tel Aviv. She is the recipient of grants from numerous institutions including the Pollock Krasner Foundation, Artist Trust Arts Innovator Award, Americans for the Arts, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts.
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Bill Viola
Bill Viola (1951-2024) is internationally recognized as an artist instrumental in the establishment of video as a vital form of contemporary art, and in so doing has helped to greatly expand its scope in terms of technology, content, and historical reach. His video installations—total environments that envelop the viewer in image and sound—employ state-of-the-art technologies and are distinguished by their precision and direct simplicity. Viola was the recipient of numerous awards and honors including a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Fellowship (1989), Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French Government (2006), the XXI Catalonia International Prize in Barcelona, Spain (2009), the Japan Art Association’s Praemium Imperiale art award in painting (2011), and elected an Honorary Royal Academician (2017).
Photos and Videos by Stellar Propeller Studio and Joshua Dorado, for the Galleries of Contemporary Art at UCCS, 2026