Máaz

March 8th to April 28th, 2024

Máaz: Recent Archeological Discoveries from Earth’s Second Colony

Developments in imaging and reality synthesis technologies have enabled archeologists to dig into the premains of the early days of the future Máaz (Mars) colony. Using clues from fossils, potshards and digital precords, we have been able to construct a story about the lives of our descendants. We are pleased to present this unique view of the future at Gallery-O-Rama.

The question of extra-terrestrial exploration by humanity is simultaneously both exciting and fraught for us as artists. The idea of going places Earthlings have never been before, seeing new horizons, discovering new materials and life forms is intensely alluring, yet. 

We have complicated feelings about the idea of inter-stellar Manifest Destiny. We are simultaneously energized by Afro-Futurist/Indigenous-Futurist visions of a space society that’s filled with art, joy and music, inhabited by all the brown folk and their space friends too! At the same time, we see the richest people in the world lining up to build powerful, phallic rockets to launch themselves and their friends into space for joyrides, while simultaneously hiring working folks for unsustainable wages for their future colonial projects. Like the royalty of Europe in the Middle Ages, they are actively recruiting technologists and cartographers to map an easy route to exploit the riches of foreign planets (it’s funny we perceive them as “uninhabited,” like our ancestors saw the New World).

The question of whether this is archeology of the future, or archeology from the future is intentionally a conundrum of this project. It might be archeology done on Máaz long after the early colonial days, sent back to us as a time capsule/warning of what could happen if we stay on our current historical path. This is profoundly optimistic, because this viewpoint believes that people will be able to change the course of human history for the better. Maybe, instead it’s archeology from the current era, and a straight reading of what “happened” in the future. This view is much more dystopian, and suggests that the cycle of history repeating itself, and the values of exploitative Western Capitalism would be exported with the colonists. Humans would be treated as workers, but actually be complex people. Things would get complicated. 

In our attempt to decolonize future interstellar exploration, we ran aground in the fundamental problem of how to decolonize intergalactic “colonies.” 

Featuring Artists:
Lead Artists: Kaytea Petro & Julian Barber
Participating Artists: Susan Birnbaum, Lubov Ovtchinikova, Monet Oganesian, Jess Sweet.
Science Advisors: Mitch “the Scientist” Schneider, Mike Neumaker, Rick Alena

We’d like to thank The Puffin Foundation for their support of this project and the Drawing Room for instigation of this project.