With his newest and slyly powerful exhibition, Christopher Blay brings together threads in his work dating back for well over a decade. His through-lines are both apparent and subtle, but if you know his art, you intrinsically understand how what he’s making now is a culmination of years of delving into consistent themes around history, time, space, place, grief, constriction, and freedom. What’s so breathtaking about this newest work is its confidence to ask questions, and leave the narrative open-ended. As we get older and wiser, we start asking more questions than ever before.
Here, Blay pulls from both his Liberian roots and his endless love of science fiction to create a new sort of speculative fiction that may not be as fictional as it seems. He’s turned the slave ship into a spaceship—a fateful vessel he calls a “SpLaVCe” that may spell doom for its packed-in passengers, or perhaps a new path to freedom, or even both—a fresh-yet-familiar trajectory of hopelessness turned defiance and self-determination. The artist and the viewers share the experience of not knowing what happens next in this outer space, just as no one can know what’s going to happen next here, on our own Pale Blue Dot.
Price
- FREE!
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