Jesse Hudson, the Las Vegas photographer behind Downtown’s new Killing Trends art gallery, has always been an in-betweener. His preference for the past and fascination with the future has made the 24-year-old artist a sort of courier of time.
“I find history and past events more interesting than current events—and I say that with grace,” Hudson says, sitting near the back of his quaint Fremont East studio. “There’s topics I talk about from the past and topics I talk about that are current but kind of unknown, and I have this need to explore these issues, because I feel like they’re not talked about enough.”
That was the impetus behind Hudson’s new self-funded WWII-themed installation, Shelter. The realities of a war-fraught world, which for those in Ukraine has become a nightmarish new normal, deserve to be discussed and remembered, Hudson says.
“I know it may be on social media, on TikTok and on the news all the time, but it’s so easy to scroll past that and not really indulge in it,” he says. “That was the idea of this project, to take a hyper object like nuclear war and make it more tangible.”
Hudson spent a year and a half building a life-size, hidden bunker inside his gallery. Resurrecting a “war-like microcosm” wasn’t easy; the artist spent hours combing through online archives of fallout shelters and old mines. He also gleaned information from Bradley Garrett, a geographer and author of fascinating texts like Bunker: Building for the End Times.
The result of that research is stunning. You’re provided a lantern on your way into the dark, gaping passageway. Gravel crunches beneath your feet, and a groundswell of war planes whip overhead from a dynamic audio system Hudson has rigged together. A radio in the distance crackles with Russian audio—indiscernible but eerie enough to make the hairs on your neck stand at attention.
Across the floor are trunks full of war-time pamphlets, some rationed MREs (Meal, Ready-to-Eat) and a lone cot. The walls themselves change from sheet metal to rock-lined architecture the further you go, and bottled medicine lines shelves in the same area as a floor-to-ceiling board of bunker locations. They’re all real sites, Hudson adds. Everything here is.
“All the medicines are real, all the MREs are real, all the ammo crates are from World War II,” he says. “A lot of military pamphlets and Civil Defense relics that were donated to us were discovered in an undisclosed location in a town that was abandoned.”
Though Shelter was conceptualized well before Ukraine’s war, the timing gave the exhibit added gravitas. “I will never forget a moment where me and [my friend] were sitting in the shelter, laying on the concrete ground watching a press conference from Vladimir Putin, announcing that he’s gonna go into the Ukraine war,” he says. “There were a lot of times … we both looked at each other and were like, ‘We’re on the right track with this.’”
Hudson revisits conflict, and the threat of nuclear war, a lot in his work. That fascination dates back to his parents, who both held jobs in Nevada’s atomic testing industry. “That gave me a jump start into my research of, What is this place? What is the history of it?” Hudson explains.
“Going on Google Earth, I found the satellite image of all of the craters that they blew up,” he says. “It just looks like cheese in the middle of the desert.”
Over the span of 40 years, more than 1,000 bombs were detonated 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas. Hudson marveled at that, but the aftermath of those tests has hit exceptionally close to home.
“My mom now suffers from lung damage,” he says. “And I know that a lot of people who live in Utah, and in Nevada, suffer from the testings that we did here. To shed light on those topics is something that is important to me.”
Hudson hopes to give other local artists a chance to do that at Killing Trends, which also features his analog camera store Fremont Photo Co. and wall real estate for future art shows. He’s currently looking for investors and donors who can help fund the space for more projects.
“The goal of the overall space is to be sort of like an audio-visual art playhouse,” he says, especially for “a lot of under-represented artists here in town” looking to show work.
“I grew up Downtown. A lot is changing Downtown, and we want to try and keep it authentic,” he says. “ I really want to try and keep the arts down here.”
SHELTER By appointment only. Killing Trends, 901 E. Fremont St. #110, killingtrends.com.
