Future Texts: Panel Discussion
Architects of the Future - City Inside Her, 2014. Woodblock and screenprint. 25 3/4 by 44 1/4 inches. Courtesy of the artist and Durham Press, Inc.
Future Texts:
Imagining Utopia in a Time of Crisis and Change
Moderated by Dr. Saisha Grayson, Curator, Smithsonian American Art Museum
Chitra Ganesh, Artist
Dr. Alondra Nelson, Sociologist
Cauleen Smith, Artist
Stacy Lynn Waddell, Artist
Saya Woolfalk, Artist
Organized by Candice Madey, Stellar Projects
June 8, 2020
Watch a recording of the event
Download the reading list
“We will make our own future Text.”
- Ishmael Reed, 1972
The FUTURE TEXTS exhibition was postponed to fall 2020 due to conditions surrounding COVID-19. However, since the public health crisis has made disparate access to health care and economic stability blatantly clear–alongside the long-standing crisis of discriminatory social systems, the question of how to reimagine the near future is ever more urgent.
The SJ Weiler Fund invites Dr. Alondra Nelson to join curator Saisha Grayson in conversation with four contemporary artists—Chitra Ganesh, Cauleen Smith, Stacy Lynn Waddell, and Saya Woolfalk. These artists each explore personal visions of the future that redress history and expose and revoke the cultural and gendered biases of outmoded techno-narratives through their work.
FUTURE TEXTS: Imagining Utopia in a Time of Crisis and Change encourages a vital conservation. How can artists, writers and thinkers engage and provoke radical new ideas for our world? What lessons can we learn from our predecessors to guide us in reinventing a more equitable future for all?
