Future Sun

Marquette, NE
Created at the Art Farm Nebraska Residency, 2020

“There is nothing new under the sun, but there are new suns,” writes science fiction author and visionary speculative futurist Octavia Butler. In so many ways, Butler’s work is more relevant than ever. Her projections for dystopian possibilities, written in the 90’s, come close to actual news headlines tweeted in 2020. But her work doesn’t succumb to the played out and uninventive apocalypse narratives we see in so many Hollywood films, nor does it leave you entirely depleted of all hope like Black Mirror. In response to Butler’s work, adrienne maree brown states, “all organizing is science fiction.” As our window to radically change the way we live and abolish systems that prioritize capital accumulation for a few over the holistic wellbeing of living organisms, we are all being summoned to imagine worlds that do not yet exist. 

“Future Sun” is an arched entryway, a symbolic portal to a new world and a future sun. The “sun” is quite literally made out of the bottom of a barrel, recontextualized and elevated to illuminate new worlds.