A Tomorrow: Monsters and Relics from Asia and Africa Preview

In A Tomorrow, three artists explore how contemporary depictions of gods, relics and architectures from non-Western cultures — specifically Asia and Africa — have been appropriated to construct visions of the distant future. In science-fiction filmmaking, trendy interior design, video games and similar future-oriented aesthetics, Asian and African cultures make cameo appearances. In these forms, they may be diverted from their rightful frameworks to instead construct a general sense of worldliness or fashionability. The iconographies visible in many of our well-recognized pop-cultural references — like Blade Runner or Battlestar Galactica— are in truth objects of daily use for culturally specific living, rituals of prayer and site-specific renderings of homes or other decontextualized community structures.

On the Neon Horizon is a short video essay that takes one of the world-building tics of white science fiction — gratuitous signage in Asian languages — to consider its utopian potential and dystopian applications.

In the past four years, Suparak’s installations, videos, and performances have been presented at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and ArtScience Museum, Singapore. A recipient of the 2022 San Francisco Bay Area Artadia Award, Suparak lives and works in Oakland, California.

She Who Sees The Unknown (2017-2021) is a research-based project by Morehshin Allahyari that uses 3D simulation, sculpture, archiving, and storytelling to re-figure monstrous female/queer figures of Islamicate origin. The traditions and myths associated with them are used to explore the catastrophes of colonialism, patriarchism and environmental degradation in relation to the Middle East. 

Morehshin has been part of numerous exhibitions, festivals, and workshops around the world including Venice Biennale di Architettura, New Museum, The Whitney Museum of American Art, Pompidou Center, MoMa, Victoria and Albert Museum, Queens Museum, and Museum of Modern Art, Taipei. She has been featured in Art21, The New York Times, BBC, Huffington Post, Wired, National Public Radio, Parkett Art Magazine, and Al Jazeera, among others. Allahyari is an assistant professor of Digital Media Art at Stanford University.

The Gandhara Series (2023) are collages Farooq creates by collaging, overlaying and physically moving images of select cultural objects in museums on a scanner. A schist Buddha head meets Khanpur oranges growing on the road to Taxila and the turkey sandwich the conservator ate for lunch. Facilitating these visual encounters and cross-pollinations, Farooq aims to restore the Gandharan cultural objects to their way of being in the world that preceded museological interest.

Farooq has held exhibitions at institutions around the world including the Toronto Biennial of Art (2024), Venice Architecture Biennale (2023), Rijksmuseum van Oudheden, Leiden (2023), Institute of Islamic Culture, Paris (2017); The British Library, London (2015); Maquis Projects, Izmir (2015); and Artellewa, Cairo (2014). Reviews dedicated to his work have been published by Art Forum, Canadian Art, The Washington Post, BBC Culture, Hyperallergic, Artnet, The Huffington Post, and C Magazine.