The concrete bunker destroyed by the 15-megaton Bravo explosion. One of 38 images by Mark Klett on display in Giannini Hall.
Between July 1945 and November 1962, during the Cold War, the Marshall Islands absorbed more than sixty US nuclear tests, rendering atolls uninhabitable and leaving health impacts lasting generations. Those same atolls now face erasure by rising seas. Yet Marshallese culture endures—in navigation, language, art, and an unbroken relationship with the ocean.
In 2023, thirty international artists, writers, scientists, and filmmakers traveled 450 nautical miles across the Marshall Islands with youth and elders from the nation's Indigenous communities. Among them were photographer Mark Klett and William L. Fox, Director Emeritus at the Institute for Art + Environment at the Nevada Museum of Art in Reno, Nevada. It was not an expedition to witness ruin, but a return: an act of honoring ancestral lands and the struggles of those who came before. Following this expedition, those aboard produced works of art, poetry, music, film, and research confronting the entangled legacies of nuclear testing, colonialism, and climate change in the Pacific. That project, Kōmij Mour Ijin / Our Life Is Here, now comes to UC Berkeley.
Rausser College is honored to host an exhibit featuring 38 photographs selected from the recently published Remembering the Future: Nuclear Testing, Rising Seas, and The Marshall Islands (Radius Books, © 2026) by Klett and Fox. Emerging from the Kõmij Mour Ijin / Our Life Is Here expedition, Klett's images move between the physical remains of nuclear testing—bunkers, craters, camera towers reclaimed by jungle—and the everyday textures of Marshallese life: canoe building, weaving, seawalls raised by hand. Paired with archival images from the testing era and drawn from Fox's field notes and essays, the photo essay holds both histories at once: the violence of nuclear history, and the resilience of a culture that continues to inhabit these islands.
On September 23, the College will host an artist- and curator-led tour with Mark Klett and William L. Fox at 4:00 pm in Giannini Hall. Find more information and event RSVP on the events calendar listing
This presentation is part of Kōmij Mour Ijiin/Our Life is Here, a series of exhibitions, installations, courses, and public programs across UC Berkeley during the 2026–27 academic year. Guided by the Environmental Arts and Humanities Initiative, the series centers Marshallese artists and acts of cultural return through satellite exhibitions and installations at Doe Library, the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Giannini Hall, Memorial Glade, and the Worth Ryder Art Gallery; an expedition film screening at the Graduate School of Journalism featuring responses from faculty and involved artists; and allied events and courses across campus. Together, these programs invite the UC Berkeley community to engage with Marshallese histories and perspectives while exploring nuclear legacies, climate change, cultural resilience, and our shared futures. The initiative will culminate in fall 2027 with an installation at Bakar Labs and an exhibition at the David Brower Center, incorporating critical and creative contributions from the campus community.
Learn more about the Kōmij Mour Ijiin/Our Life is Here events at the Center for Interdisciplinary Critical Inquiry website