“Our roots are in the dark; the earth is our country. Why did we look up for blessing — instead of around, and down? What hope we have lies there. Not in the sky full of orbiting spy-eyes and weaponry, but in the earth we have looked down upon. Not from above, but from below. Not in the light that blinds, but in the dark that nourishes..”   

 – Ursula K. Le Guin, from A Left Handed Commencement Address

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From science fiction’s golden age, the 1940s and 1950s, came many of the images that form our conception of what apocalyptic times will look and feel like. In the aftermath of two world wars, the genre was shaped by anxieties around continued technological advancements and cultural transformations. The most salient issues of this period–atomic warfare, the space race, the formation of Communist states internationally and Civil Rights movements domestically– began to pivotally change the understanding of the relationship between the individual and the collective they are bound within. 

The social emphasis on conformity that was prevalent at this time was alchemized into the energy of collective action and focused towards nationalistic ends. Across the globe, humankind was governmentally subsidized to pursue technological advancement, no matter the cost. Thinking around the cultural value placed on progress as a starting point, early sci-fi narratives followed the thread of promises of boundless innovation. The stories originating from this period primarily grapple with two themes: the consequences of unconstrained scientific and technological development, and the influences of a human or non-human ‘other.’ 

Today, as climate change, artificial intelligence, and political polarization bring into being a world where outcomes feel increasingly uncontrollable, speculative futures of our time tend to acknowledge the environment itself (whether physical or digital) as a postmodern subject. Not only are the advances in technology and the presence of human and non-human ‘others’ at play, but the environment in which the individual and the larger collective are situated too has a locus of identity. We have added concentric circles of influence to our social anxieties. In the positive inverse, we are more aware than ever of the role that our environment plays in our conception of self and in the formation of collectives. 

Indigenous cosmologies have encouraged a similar way of thinking for eons. The Seventh Generation Principle, also called seven generation thinking, mandates that individuals and groups should consider the impact of their decisions on seven future generations. The principle is based on an ancient Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) philosophy that encourages individuals to situate themselves between their ancestors and their descendants, recognizing an individual as a fractal within a fractal. We are the result of seven generations that came before, and we will have an impact on those who still exist seven generations into the future. 

Taken a step further, humankind as we know it now encompasses all matter that was pre-human, and holds within us the potentiality of all that is post-human too. The world as we know it is always falling away, kaleidoscopically transmuting into something else. Eventually, it will be unrecognizable. 

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World Without End is a group exhibition that brings together works by five artists who offer compelling visions of a time when the earth has been reclaimed by nature, continuing to evolve and iterate beyond what is currently possible to conceive. In contrast to apocalyptic narratives that often dominate cultural discourse around the end of our epoch, the works in this exhibition refuse the inevitability of exploitation, destruction, and collapse wrought by colonialism, capitalism, and environmental degradation. Thinking outside of this paradigm, Aron John Dubois, Lowe Fehn, Estefania Puerta Grisales, Sarah M. Rodriguez, and Noah Schneiderman reimagine a future not defined by ecological ruin, but by regeneration and interdependence between all living things.

Sarah M. Rodriguez’s sculpture Rooted Honey Creeper is an augury. Its hybrid form, a fusion of identifiable organic elements in an unfamiliar chorus, is a foretelling. An index of an alien ecology; its scale confronts us, its parts serve unknowable functions. A proposal of a genetic palimpsest, this work might document the point in the pre-recorded past or distant future when the evolution of non-human life forms broke free from hierarchy and teleology. 

The form of Rooted Honey Creeper is supported by a fictional root system, using cast aluminum seed pods as its foundation to symbolize connection, communication, and the potential for growth. By reimagining seed pods, carriers of future potential, as an organism’s root system, this work contemplates the profound resilience found in the act of taking root—a hopeful gesture that signifies regeneration and permanence.

Lowe Fehn’s ethereal large-scale works on paper also seek to provide a hopeful prognosis for the future of our planet. Representing a sense of familiarity in an exhibition otherwise drawing upon sci-fi inflected visions of possible distant futures, Fehn’s works depict images that feel tethered to our known reality. A cow half hidden behind a large boulder, mirroring one another in form, offers a reflection on physical embodiment. A basin filled with water, flower floating on the surface and two stones beneath, offers a reflection on community gathering and ritual. In commemorating these gentle and dreamlike moments, Fehn posits that the land will not only remain resilient beyond all wrought upon it; but if we are able to see, it will promise us forgiveness, provide us all the tools we need to survive, and grant us protection along the path.

Noah Schneiderman’s abstract paintings dissolve temporal and material boundaries between human and non-human living things. Working in cooperation with natural dyes and pigments, he chases the spirit embedded within his materials and interprets their signs with intuitive reverence, allowing images to come to the surface and be made known by his marks. Schneiderman’s paintings are swirling amalgamations of memory and matter—stems, blooms, limbs, faces and wings, merging into composite organisms. Documenting through fragments and flashes, resisting linear narratives, Schneiderman’s paintings operate from an ancient impulse to record impressionistically and extemporaneously.

Aron John Dubois’ paintings in World Without End are artifacts from a speculative future culture. His paintings explore their liturgies, documenting the hybridized creatures of their mythologies. In “Mire,” Dubois depicts a goddess-like figure who yearns toward a sickly glowing sun as she nurses nine wriggling supplicants. She appears to be of vaguely human heredity, yet evolved for ground-dwelling and breeding large clutches. Her pose recalls “Christina's World,” the 1948 painting by Andrew Wyeth, with its quiet darkness and deep sense of longing. This creature is redoubled in “Sepulture,” which depicts a pilgrim’s badge bearing the goddess’ form. While in one depiction she is shackled by her brood, in another she is memorialized and exalted. Dubois' vision gestures toward a dystopian future where new forms of existence emerge from the ruins of past ideologies.

“Earth Mover” by Estefania Puerta seeks to archive remnants of the world around us. Taking the the form of a reliquary or seed bank, this work holds minerals from locations with significance to the artist. Stained glass and silver enamel enshrine volcanic rock from El Nevado del Ruiz in Colombia and Pompeii in Italy, along with slate from Vermont; a reminder of how humankind has carried relationships with the land with us as we move from place to place. Puerta’s practice is a reflection on migration, world-making, shape-shifting, border crossing, and language failure. Behind the stained glass, indescipherable words are written in looping cursive forms that become pattern. The repetitive motion mirrors how the mind loops in states of trauma, circling endlessly. An image of an ear, placed in the center of the work, represents listening—a body part that invites intimacy, as its smallness encourages whispers. Understood to be a ritual object, “Earth Mover” reminds us to keep an "ear to the ground," listening to the earth’s subtle sounds and stories. 

The works in World Without End collectively suggest that an apocalypse is not an abstract, future event but an ongoing reality for many life forms across history, human and non-human alike. A linear trajectory towards destruction does not bind the future they imagine to a catastrophic end. The potential futures proposed here evolves iteratively, and infinitely, allowing the environment to assert itself as an agent of transformation and boundless possibility. Rather than being motivated by fear, the artists in this exhibition think generatively, imagining futures that are not post-human, but continue in co-evolution long after human dominance has fallen away. 

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