Curated by Karen Meninno and Carolyn Wirth

About FeministFuturist:

The past several years have seen a resurgence, reappraisal and reaffirmation of feminism. At the same time, we are now living the hurricane impact predicted by Alvin and Heidi Toffler in Future Shock (1970): accelerating cultural thrust creates an unfamiliar world into which we are launched like astronauts into an unknown dimension. Women artists are now uniquely poised to be cultural powerbrokers whose viewpoints on the future of society and the planet shape the world stage itself, instead of merely filling seats in the audience.

FeministFuturist adds to the cultural conversation about the future from a feminist point of view, inserting female-centered narratives into future worlds. The exhibition includes work that speculates on future earth communities and the potential lives of beings of all kinds, while offering visions of coexistence, healing, and community.

Artists:

Freedom Baird, Amy Borezo, Nadine Boughton, Linda Leslie Brown, Marisa Chentakul, Julia Daviy, Magda Fernandez, KSpace (Karen Meninno and Carolyn Wirth), Brenna Leaver, AK Liesenfeld, Linda Price-Sneddon and Genevieve Quick

Magda Fernandez, Untitled, 2020. Two-channel HD video (color, no sound), 3:15 min. Courtesy of the artist.

When I try to imagine the future, it’s difficult for me to think past the threat of global warming. I see so many people living in denial, as if the worse is beyond their life span. In the meantime, climate science increasingly warns us that we must face the music collectively because the threat is real. Thanks to a lifetime of consuming science fiction and disaster movies, it’s too easy for me to envision what this spectre might look like. But to me, feminism is about telling the truth, no matter the resistance. As an image-maker, the least I can do is show a glimpse of the possible nightmare that is to come if we don’t act now. Because if common sense isn’t working, perhaps fear will.

Linda Price-Sneddon, S/H/E Emergent, 2020. 6:30 min video loop. Courtesy of the artist.

S/H/E (Spirit Healing Entity) envisions a world where the feminine aspect of Being is brought back to parity with the male, a parity lost since the inception of the Common Era (CE). It is S/H/E’s contention that much ill on earth has been wrought from this imbalance. Too much Yang, not enough Yin. S/H/E Emergent is the beginning of our healing as One. A key motif in the video is a prehistoric burial mound of the Ohio River Valley Hopewell Indians. Neither a patriarchy nor a matriarchy, Hopewell culture was heterarchical. Individuals were ranked by capability and contribution, not gender. In Hopewell and other early Indian cultures, women held high status roles as tribal leader, warrior and shaman. S/H/E seeks to restore balance between humans and our Earth.

Genevieve Quick, Planet Celadon: Our Receiver is Operating, 2018. 2 minute trailer. Courtesy of the artist.

In the video installation and dance performance Planet Celadon: Our Receiver Is Operating, artist Genevieve Quick imagines Asian American identity through a science fiction narrative that explores the challenges of communicating with a distant place and culture. Embracing her own hybridity and displacement, Quick imagines the Asian American experience as not just a global immigration phenomenon, but an interplanetary migration. —The Asian Art Museum, 2018

Freedom Baird, 2020
Online variation

Interdisciplinary artist Freedom Baird is a sculptor, designer, writer, and creator of installation environments in which she sometimes appears as a performer and facilitator. Freedom has adapted her installation in the FeministFuturist exhibition for online participation and invites you to contribute your instructions below.

Instructions Vault Instructions

Take a moment to envision future situations in time and space. Consider answers to these questions: What will be happening then? Who will be there? What actions/items/ethics will be needed? Daydream your personal instructions for future persons in future roles. Thank you for your guidance.

Feed of Instructions

• Learn to let it go and the universe will learn to let you have it
• We have recognized the incredible potential for human invention from towering skyscrapers to robots and automation, but while this has gone away, we’ve gotten back to the basics of what makes us human – of connection breaking bread together and connecting.
• Forgive us we were fighting entropy forgive yourself…you simply inherited this. Make beautiful futures (for both of us)
• I’m assuming you are now in a position so far removed and alien to my own that any instructions I could possibly give you would be irrelevant and highly presumptuous.
• The only instruction I can think to give you is not to give up. We’re counting on you.
• Don’t give them your master password.
• Slow down and think before you act. There is always another side to the story.

Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake (first book in the MaddAddam Trilogy)
Freedom Baird, Shoreline Recall
Lois McMaster Bujold, Diplomatic Immunity (part of the Vorkosigan Saga)
Octavia Butler, Parable of the Talents
Angela Carter, Heroes and Villains
Louise Erdrich, The Future Home of the Living God
Kameron Hurley, Meet me in the Future
N.K. Jemisin, How Long ‘til Black Future Month?
Madeleine L’Engle, A Wrinkle in Time
Ursula LeGuin, The Dispossessed
Ursula LeGuin, The Lathe of Heaven
Ursula LeGuin, The Left Hand of Darkness
Karen Lord, The Best of All Possible Worlds
T.A. McLaughlin, The Love of the Tayamni
Nnedi Okorafor, Who Fears Death
Joanna Russ, The Female Man
Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven
Alice B. Sheldon, (aka James Tiptree, Jr. ), Her Smoke Rose Up Forever
Malka Older, Informocracy
Lisa Yaszek, Ed., The Future is Female! 25 Classic Sci-Fiction Stories by Women