In Shaper of God, American Artist harnesses the speculative wisdom and everlasting presence of Afrofuturist icon Octavia E. Butler. The exhibition, currently at Pioneer Works, is timely; it is no secret that Butler accurately predicted that 2025 would be a year of ecological and political catastrophe in her 1993 novel Parable of the Sower. Engaging with the notion of otherwise worlds in Artist’s multimedia installations makes it apparent that we must respond to our cataclysmic moment with Butler’s ingenuity.
Artist’s exhibition reads in part as a much-needed love letter to Butler. Spread across the spacious red brick building are architectural, archival, and screen-based installations that address critical issues of resilience and futurity. A bus stop with a base that resembles an agave plant recalls both Butler’s lifelong use of public transportation and the protective agave plants bordering the protagonist Lauren Oya Olamina’s compound in Parable.
Artist has hand-traced intimate ephemera like doodles, bus schedules, and maps from Butler’s institutional archive at California’s Huntington Library. Artist’s drawings and notes are displayed in vitrines on one side of the bus stop. On the other side is a sculptural reimagining of a chicken coop based on Butler’s grandmother’s ranch in Apple Valley, California. The coop is filled with archival boxes reminiscent of containers holding Butler’s archive at the Huntington. That Butler’s archive is represented within her family chicken coop suggests how her radiant legacy is intertwined with the resilience in her maternal lineage. Butler’s mother and grandmother created a home on new land after moving to California during the Great Migration.
A selection of films on view present speculative illustrations of elements from Parable. In the two-channel video “The Monophobic Response” (2024), a group of artists, scholars, and scientists act out a rocket test based on Earthseed, a group of climate refugees who are trying to “take root among the stars.” Filmed in the Mojave Desert, we witness the group performing scientific calculations and see their enthusiasm about fleeing Earth for their next stop — space.
At the back of the gallery, three short films — part of an installation based on Olamina’s living room in Parable — depict scenes from the novel. Visitors are welcome to sit on the furniture and read from the stacks of books about Butler, rocket science, California, and other subjects while they watch the films. “The Arroyo Seco” (2022) documents the ecology and history of the titular site on Tongva lands, near Pasadena, where both Artist and Butler were raised. Bearing an uncanny resemblance to Kanye West’s presidential campaign, “Christopher Donner” (2024) is an imagined campaign video for the MAGA-esque fascist presidential candidate in Parable, while “Alicia Catalina Godinez Leal” (2024) envisions a news segment broadcasting the tragic death of an astronaut who reached Mars.
Parable of the Sower was set in a post-apocalyptic United States that mirrors the authoritarianism and precarity of our current moment. Butler knew California wildfires would grow more devastating with time, and in a harrowing twist, Artist’s former home in Altadena burned down in January 2025. Endless questions arose for me while viewing Artist’s exploration and appreciation of Butler. What would it mean for the survival of the planet if we were to take seriously Black feminist visions of climate justice in which coexistence with nature is prioritized over environmental plunder? How might something like space travel be liberated from the world of Elon Musk types and instead be stewarded by marginalized communities? Can a creative and futuristic blend of resistance strategies rescue us from the fascist megalomaniacs in power today? Artist’s phenomenal work carries us toward Butler’s forever urgent blueprint to surviving catastrophe.
American Artist: Shaper of God continues at Pioneer Works (159 Pioneer Street, Red Hook, Brooklyn) through April 13. The exhibition was curated by Vivian Chui.
