192:291, 2002 Digital video 5 minutes Edition of 20 $500 According to the world almanac, there are 192 officially recognized countries in the world. 192:291 is composed of 192 repetitions of a film tiled at half-second intervals. The content of this film is the first-ever-televised broadcast of an atomic bomb test done on March 17, 1953 at Yucca Flats, Nevada. Narrated by Walter Cronkite, the broadcast communicates his impressions and emotive responses while simultaneously describing the military operation as it unfolds. My intention for the work is to have it convey the complexity of our response to viewing such footage. We are seduced by the sublime visual qualities of nuclear explosions. Yet this attraction is coupled with a horror which stems from understanding the destructive power of such instruments. The viewer, observing the work can calculate: if every country were hit by 3 repeated bombs, the destruction of the world would occur in 5 minutes.

BLAST #1, 2005 Watercolor and gouache on paper 11 x 14 inches $800 Watercolor studies of atmospheric nuclear bomb tests conducted by the Department of Energy in Nevada. The works aim to play upon the sublime visual qualities of atom bombs, which as spectacle serve to capture a universal imagination of the modern apocalypse.

BLAST #2, 2005 Watercolor and gouache on paper 11 x 14 inches $800

BLAST #3, 2005 Watercolor and gouache on paper 11 x 14 inches $800

HIS MEMORY, LIKE THE WORLD’S, WAS GETTING SPOTTY, 2006 C-prints 30 x 49 inches (diptych) Ed/5 $2,200 This work is a juxtaposition of two war related signifiers: 1) A declassified war document from July 1945 instructing the use of a “special bomb” upon Japanese sites along with correlating surveillance of the bombing for military and civilian research purposes 2) A camouflage pattern taken from a Berlin subway train, with coloration inspired by the United States national flag. Coupled together, the images convey a U.S. military narrative of concealment. www.claudiaxvaldes.com

White City Of The Future, 2006 Digital video, 9 minutes 30 Seconds Edition of 5