By Jay Stracke
There is an old adage that says “the future depends on what you do today.” And today, six visionaries have gathered to explore the future through a concatenation of compelling work.
Showcased by Houston’s DiverseWorks and running between February 19–April 11, the online exhibition Visionary Futures is a series of projects created by six queer, non-binary artists of color that critically explores questions of the future, the ways in which we survive, and the legacies that we leave behind. “We are conditioned through popular culture, art, and music to believe a certain set of standards, and that we have to achieve them,” says DiverseWorks curator Ashley DeHoyos. “Through Visionary Futures and the work that I’m doing, I hope that I’m helping others understand that we can create our own narratives, our own stories . . . so that there are more people that can create after us.”
“I recently read Emergent Strategy [by adrienne maree brown] and have been thinking about fractured spaces,” DeHoyos adds. “And, there was a podcast about this by Amanda Shochet, who was looking at bees and how they thrive in fractured habitats, like small pockets of flowers that grow in concrete parking lots, and the beauty in creating a space to thrive amid the mess and the negative barriers. That’s where I started with Visionary Futures.”
The artists featured in Visionary Futures—Antonius-Tín Bui, Chandrika, Lovie Olivia, Preetika Rajgariah, S Rodriguez, Y2K, and the digital platform Time Zone—imagine possible trajectories through a variety of virtual performances.
Antonius-Tín Bui
Antonius-Tín Bui is a spontaneous shapeshifter and poly-disciplinary artist with roots all over the country. For Visionary Futures, Bui has orchestrated a series of guided meditations in collaboration with Xoài Pham, Jason Ting, jas lin 林思穎, Kyoko Takenaka, Michelle Phuong Ting, Brinda Iyer, Mimi Zhu, Theresa-Xuan Bui, Khushboo Gulati, and Sobia Ahmad.
“It was, for me, quite the leap to incorporate guided meditations into my art practice because, so often, that’s siloed into the fields of mysticism, spirituality, health, and wellness,” Bui says. “But, I really don’t see a separation between these studies. The reason why I decided to choose the guided meditation form for Visionary Futures is because I truly believe that, in order to even imagine what a utopia can look like, you must be completely honest with the conditions of the present moment. In such an accelerated capitalistic society, we are often denied the time to truly witness, acknowledge, and process what we are experiencing and feeling.”
Chandrika
Chandrika is a non-binary musical artist, actor, and founder of Time Zone, an inclusive digital platform for creatives. For Visionary Futures, Chandrika presents CRYSIS, a dramatized performance of two tracks from their self-composed EP. CRYSIS “depicts the interplay of both liberation and loss of the individual will in times of distress and peril.”
Lovie Olivia and Preetika Rajgariah
Born from a shared passion of cooking, dining and dialogue, Two Dykes and a Knife (TDAAK) was conceived in 2017 by Lovie Olivia and Preetika Rajgariah. To them, this contribution to Visionary Futures expounds bountiful intersections of race, class, politics, religion, and orientation that occur at the dining table and how food is “a necessary nourishment that unintentionally unites people.”
S Rodriguez
S Rodriguez is a Texas-based interdisciplinary artist, writer, arts organizer, and co-creator of Paraspace Books. Their contribution to Visionary Futures, Rhizome, interrogates gender as a tool. Through this interrogation, Rodriguez questions how gender plays a role in the way one operates in society. “I think of a body as literally anything—human, non-human, or post-human. So Rhizome has taken that idea and pushed it beyond ‘the human,’” they say.
“Be it a computer or a hammer, gender is the same kind of tool that you use to operate when walking out into the world,” Rodgriguez adds. “I see it as something malleable, changeable, or something that you can use, discard, or change depending on how you want to continue operating in the world.”
Y2K
Y2K is a performance, music, and installation artist whose work explores themes of queer stigma and trauma as related to technology and online spaces. They bring their experimental music video, TECH.NOLOGY, to Visionary Futures. “This project was really exciting because I’ve done plenty of performance art work, but I’ve never been able to put visuals in a ‘music video-esque’ setting,” says Y2K. “A lot of the imagery I used was being chained, tied up, or trapped, and then breaking free from that. The video feels almost like a dream or a nightmare.”
“With TECH.NOLOGY, and with a lot of the projects I do, I am really thinking of this futuristic world that exists in the internet or cyberspace—where there is no gender,” Y2K continues. “I think many queer contemporary artists are using the internet and other technologies to create our gender expressions and create worlds where we are accepted. It was amazing working with DiverseWorks’ team, as well as Y2K Laboratories, my team of queer creatives, who worked to put this together.”
Videos and streaming performances are hosted on DiverseWorks’ YouTube channel and talks and live events and workshops are hosted on Zoom. Registration is required to participate in Zoom sessions/workshops.
Founded by artists in 1982, DiverseWorks is nationally known for its ground-breaking programming; as a resource for the innovative and meaningful engagement of communities; and as a force that has shaped contemporary thought and practice in Houston and the nation. DiverseWorks has a long history of supporting the creation of new work, cross-disciplinary collaboration, and as a bridge between diverse sectors of the art community, commissioning, producing, and presenting new and daring art in various forms through innovative collaborations that honor each artist’s vision without constraint.
