Octavia E. Butler Papers: mssOEB 1-9062 I (Shape God)
2022 - Drawing & Print (Drawing & Print)
67.4 x 70 x 4.5 cm
American Artist
American Artist is engaged in a multiyear research project that traces and teases various interconnections between the life and work of science fiction author Octavia E. Butler (b. 1947, Pasadena, CA); the evolution of rocketry and sci-fi in Los Angeles; and the post-war movement of African-diasporic families from the Southern to the Western United States, a phenomenon known as the Second Great Migration. Using a historical materialist frame of study, American Artist’s undertaking asks of the region and the frequency of Black people practicing art and science in Altadena, an enclave northeast of Los Angeles. The project began with an online research “machine” commissioned by KADIST, Shaper of God , and continued with the artist’s solo show of the same name at REDCAT—presented with KADIST. These projects take their name from an epitaph in the religious text The Books of the Living —written by Lauren Oya Olamina, the protagonist of Butler’s 1993 novel, Parable of the Sower—instructing followers to “Shape God”. As part of the exhibition at REDCAT, American Artist created a set of drawings based on the Octavia E. Butler archives at the Huntington Library. These are rendered on the call-slips and institutional paper visitors use to take notes while at the Huntington. Quotations—such as Butler’s High School musings on Pasadena; a letter from her mother about growing-up in Louisiana and moving to California; as well as a prediction about the 2020s written by Butler in 1993—are presented with other ephemera that American Artist selected from the archive. One such work from this series, Octavia E. Butler Papers: mssOEB 1-9062 I (Shape God) , feature’s Butler’s first sketch of the central principle of her fictive religion “Earthseed”: that the only lasting truth in the universe is change, and as such, people can “shape god” as a way to make sense of, and operate in the world. Octavia E. Butler Papers is not only a central titular document to American Artist’s multi-year project, it is also a key artefact that unlocks an entire discourse around Afro-futurism, Butler’s work, and its continual impact, by bringing to light how the author forged and furthered these concepts through her work.
American Artist makes experimental work in the form of sculpture, video, and software that comments on histories of race, technology and forms of knowledge production. American Artist had their name legally changed in 2013 for multiple reasons. The idea that they chose to generalize their name so as to confuse their identity is itself a comment on identity and its related privileges, and conversely, its disenfranchisements. The artist also publishes unbag, a journal on art and politics, as well as writes articles for the The New Inquiry .
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