crepuscular gardeners
Travis McEwen
My practice borrows from the visual aesthetics and motifs of science-fiction, which has long been a site and a space to imagine other ways of being and other possibilities for this world. Particularly in the works of Octavia Butler, Samuel R. Delany, and Ursula K Le Guin. Depicting isolated figures in desert and steppe like landscapes, I am interested in how queer subjects face and share an experience of isolation and how this can drive a need for world building. My worlds contain random super structures, crepuscular skies with sometimes unnatural and lurid colors and figures (when clothed) in transparent bodysuits. The figures’ skin tones vary from naturalistic to unusual and the landscapes (initially barren) indicate desertification or ecological collapse. The combination of being otherworldly and being on the precipice facing disaster echoes my experiences as a queer person.
Part of The Orange Year, curatorial climate crisis at the Neon Heater