Octavia E. Butler’s speculative fictional imagining of Los Angeles seems to inch closer and closer to nonfiction as our apocalyptic reality grows louder and hotter by the day. At REDCAT, the exhibition of new work by American Artist shows how Butler’s words are so much more than mere warning signs–they are stories that imagine alternative futures shaped by collaboration and community.
The exhibition “Shaper of God” traces the real and imaginary story of Butler’s 1993 novel, Parable of the Sower, set in an increasingly familiar dystopic Los Angeles. Like Butler, American Artist also grew up in the Pasadena area. An installation of free-standing walls reference the “fortified city” depicted in Butler’s novel. They also function as partitions that divide the gallery space. These artificial walls point to the artist and Butler’s awareness of the ways in which systems of power are embedded in the geography and urban fabric of Los Angeles. A retro bus sign and bench seem to sprout from the ground, floating eerily in the gallery space like a mirage. It’s known that Butler didn’t drive in LA, and her writing was in many ways informed by the way in which she moved about the city–usually by bus where she would write on scraps of paper. Her movement and daily encounters informed her thinking about community and the diasporic movements that shape Los Angeles. A seemingly fictional documentary film that almost feels like a parody plays in front of a public bench. The film depicts old footage of the Arroyo Seco landscape in which Pasadena is situated, outlining the overlapping histories, communities, and movements that continue to activate and haunt the landscape. Butler’s acute attention to the topography of Los Angeles and the dynamic geopolitical history of Pasadena presents a kind of ecology of the city that exposes colliding and conflicting stories of desire, power, and community. American Artist’s exhibition emphasizes Octavia Butler’s notion of change as a force that exists in our dynamic and interconnected present. Imagining alternative futures is a project that is never done and always changing. As Butler famously reminds us, “All that you touch. You Change. All that you Change. Changes you. The only lasting truth is Change. God Is Change.”
REDCAT
631 West 2nd Street
Los Angeles, CA 90012
On view through October 2, 2022
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