I’ve been looking at a lot of art about death lately. It isn’t hard to find.
A close friend is drawn to art about despair: dystopia, satirical monuments, a pointing-out of destruction and consequences. Fewer and farther between, he says, is the opposite. It’s hard to find a serious art about hope.
But I think that many young artists are doing just that. They know if they can't transcend a bleak vision of a future planet, there may not be much planet left for them.
This month, I’m posting the work of Sofía Córdova, whose art is a profound vision of human survival and empathy. I believe we can only want what we can imagine. Right now, our government wants to spend billions of dollars on symbolic infrastructure—the same leadership that responded with paper towels as three to five thousand Americans perished during and after Hurricane Maria.
Sofía Córdova was born in Puerto Rico, works in Oakland, and is featured in the permanent collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art.
Sofía Córdova
Meltwater Pulse 1A, 2016-2018
Taxidermy rooster, pheasant tail, cast head of hornbill, wire, resin, oil paint, wood, steel pipe, sand, black seamless, dried flowers, metal conduit
This is an installation by Sofía Cordova. It depicts a familiar scene: A bird perches on a branch. But it doesn’t look like any bird you’ve ever seen before, and the tree is a log spiked on a steel beam.
In this work, the final frontier is not space but the next great extinction (and what, if anything, comes after). This bird has made it through the apocalyptic event. Its body is patched together from a rooster, a pheasant, and the cast head of a hornbill. Was this creature created by mutation or code? It rises with its wings outstretched from a reconstituted tree.
The title feels both chilling and hopeful. The melting of glacial ice and the permafrost will absolutely change life as we know it, altering the climate (it is -65° in Chicago right now, thanks to a polar vortex) unlocking ancient viruses and bacteria, and releasing rock-eating sulfuric acid. But Pulse is life, enduring even through change that is currently unimaginable.
Is it only a matter of time before the whole scene pixelates into a very different sort of resurrection? In the face of climate and human chaos, it is a monument to survival.
This is a piece about change, but it is also a piece about human bodies.
A clue to understanding this series is a performance, BILONGO LILA: Nobody Dies in a Foretold War. This performance was staged at Mills College Greek Amphiteater in 2017.
Note: In lieu of credits, the first 3 minutes introduce the performers and musicians, who are graduate students from the university.
The performance begins at [3:00], with the words: “The important thing to remember is that time has officially ended. Close your eyes and trust my voice. You have come a long way to learn how to die all over again.”
I’m including it even though it is long, split-screen, and it should be seen in person--or at least much, much bigger.
1,500 years into the future, survivors of humanity are struggling to mutate and piece together a new culture, on a planet made strange by the aging and corrupted digital interventions of late technological capitalism. The environment is a digital projection (including pixellating oceans, ruined cities, and lush forests). The set is made of reclaimed sails—another nod to aged-out technology.
Córdova leaves room for the performers to improvise, and at times (especially in the beginning), the message can land a bit on the nose. But in a culture of fake news and alternative facts, this directness feels more courageous than simplistic.
The performance is about possible futures, technological capitalism, and corruption, but most powerfully it is about bodies. In her world, human survivors recognize and transcend the cultural myths of biology, identity markers, and violence to create a more hopeful society, even on a vastly altered planet. At [26:39], words of science fiction writer John V. Marsch appear on the screen: “No it was not necessary for us to lose our appearance for you to gain it.” In the foreground, two dancers perform a melting pas de deux of mutation and perhaps love, melding into a single creature in the pink light. Painted musicians vocalize the sounds of nature and technology, while on their music stands, laptops are flipped open alongside sheet music.
There are elements of science fiction, dance culture, Afro-futurism, medicine songs, Santeria. The work also quotes Ursula K. Le Guin. There is a hopeful sense that like this bird, the most fluid of us may survive.
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