Sloth Pieta at the Sculpture Garden
Broad Art Museum, East Lansing, MI
2013
The Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum sculpture garden is located on the east side of the building, featuring sculptures by Roxy Paine, Steve Miller and Jonathan Prince
Sloth Pieta (2011) is an extension of American sculptor Steve Miller’s project, “Saude do Planeta,” in which Miller collaborated with the Brazil’s Instituto Goeldi to create a series of x-ray images of animals celebrating Brazil’s biodiversity, the sculpture depicts a female sloth with her offspring. The Brazilian sloth is suffering from air pollution and habitat loss, metaphorically highlighting a planet being sacrificed to mankind’s continued industrial progress. The black and white x-ray image has been laminated between sheets of glass.