after-life-ybca — Jeremiah Barber

11.17.2020

After Life (we survive)
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
Nov 9 2020 - Jan 24 2021
Online & In-person (outdoor) exhibition

Art 25: Art in the Twenty-Fifth Century (Lehua M. Taitano and Lisa Jarrett) with Jocelyn Kapumealani Ng

I’m excited and honored to have two new works included in this exhibition at YBCA alongside an incredible group of artists curated by Thea Quiray Tagle. As explained by Quiray Tagle in an exceptional exhibition essay that itself is a roadmap for survival, this show addresses strategies for navigating the overlapping crises of environmental destruction and violence against communities of color. We’ve all adapted or recreated our works for this tumultuous year: turning what was meant to be a traditional exhibition into a series of works viewed from outside the gallery and online. My contributions, Lightroom and Darkroom (both 2020) are interactive web presentations that reenvision the relationship between human and nonhuman animal and plant perception, uprooting the history of photography as a way to consider a non-violent approach to ecological relationships.

These two works are on view through January on the exhibition website. Also included in the exhibition are works by micha cárdenas, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Super Futures Haunt Collective, and more. You can view exhibition works through a 3D tour on your browser, or visit the show in person. Because several of the works are light-based, nighttime is the best for viewing in person.

This project and the conversations surrounding it have impacted how I view my own work in ways that are still unfolding. My works are representative of an imagined virtual studio—the objects inside are perpetually “works-in-progress”. And because of the software I am using, I can update the interiors at anytime throughout the exhibition run. While at the moment I am exhausted from making new work on a deadline, I can imagine there may be additions to the rooms as I reflect on the other works in the exhibition and their overlapping themes of speculative history-making and disrupting the anthropocene.