The MIT List Visual Arts Center will present American Artist: To Acorn, the first solo exhibition of the artist’s work in New England. The exhibition features a selection from the artist’s multi-year project, Shaper of God, which is centered on the work and life of the writer Octavia E. Butler.
American Artist’s multidisciplinary practice investigates the intersections of technology, race, and the production of knowledge. Since legally changing their name, the artist has explored the construction of identity under racial capitalism. Previous works have addressed themes of antiblackness within the history of computing, such as in Black Gooey Universe, and surveillance, as seen in 2015 and Security Theater, the latter of which transformed the Guggenheim Museum’s rotunda into a panoptic structure.
The current body of work draws inspiration from Octavia Butler’s speculative Earthseed novels, Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents. These narratives, set in a dystopian America, follow protagonist Lauren Oya Olamina as she develops the Earthseed belief system, a framework for survival and community amidst societal and environmental collapse. The artist shares a biographical connection with Butler, as both attended the same high school in Pasadena, California. This geographic and personal parallel informs the project, which also considers histories of Black migration and community in the Pasadena and Altadena areas.
Shaper of God is grounded in sustained research into the Octavia E. Butler Papers at the Huntington Library. The exhibition will include graphite drawings by American Artist that meticulously trace Butler’s notes, maps, and other ephemera onto the library’s requisite pink archival stationery. These documentary-style works are presented alongside more speculative pieces. For example, To Acorn reconstructs a bus stop sign from Butler’s era, placing it within a Southern California landscape. Another work, The Monophobic Response, involves both a film and a sculpture. It restages a historical rocket engine test from the Arroyo Seco Canyon, re-imagined as a fictional test conducted by members of the Earthseed community. The performance utilized a functional replica of the early rocket engine, built from sketches found in the Jet Propulsion Laboratory archives.
Through these works, American Artist examines Butler’s role not just as a literary figure but as a theorist of survival and relationality. The exhibition navigates between factual documentation and speculative fiction, creating a critical lens through which to view the present by affirming Butler’s own study of history and her warnings about potential futures.
As stated by Chief Curator Natalie Bell, “American Artist’s engagement with technology has long balanced rigorous inquiry and critique to confront dystopian realities. Moving between past traces and imagined possibilities, their Shaper of God project mirrors the method that Butler herself advanced.”
American Artist: To Acorn is organized by Natalie Bell, Chief Curator, with Zach Ngin, Curatorial Assistant.
The writer Octavia Butler lived from 1947 to 2006, publishing Parable of the Sower in 1993 and Parable of the Talents in 1998. American Artist legally changed their name in 2013; the works mentioned include 2015 (2019), Black Gooey Universe (2021), To Acorn (1985) [2022], Security Theater (2023), and The Monophobic Response (2024), which restages a rocket test from 1936. The exhibition will be on view from October 24, 2025, to March 15, 2026.
