This suite of sculptures and a wall piece draws upon imagery from sci-fi where pyramids signal an alien or futuristic world. Hovering over these fabrications and projections are the real-life pyramids conceived, designed, and built by humans living across ancient Latin America, Africa, and Asia.
“In this towering installation, Suparak constructs a sprawling set shaped by centuries of imperial fantasy… Snakes coil around prey; a throng of brightly feathered birds erupts into flight above, while fanciful fruits swell into bloated cornucopias.”
An RGB sports jersey version of a Clyfford Still canvas, looking like ripped remains of an on-court battle.
“A collage of Caucasian actors in roles as emotionally complex robots, AIs and cyborgs. [The installation] questions who is granted the privilege of humanity and emotional depth in these techno-futuristic landscapes.”
“Suparak’s media archaeology disrupts these racialized imaginaries of AI and identifies openings for building future imaginaries otherwise.”
An amalgamated skyline of Asian futures imagined by white filmmakers. Sourced from sci-fi movies and television shows that depict a vice-ridden, dangerous world overtly marked with elements of East, Southeast, and South Asian architecture.
An installation that collages white men outfitted in Hawaiian shirts while vacationing in future foreign lands, and a frame for the looping video Tropicollage.
The mural Tang Rainbow, which wraps around 3 sides of a wall, displays an arc of non-Asian actors outfitted in Chinese-influenced costumes across 50 years of science fiction cinema.
GIF-ified glitches of Techno-Orientalist fantasies, this 3-channel video work shows how koi are used to embellish the scenery in Hollywood sci-fi.
An installation that “compiles stills from films that marshal empathy for AI agents who are coded as white and humanized through their association with whiteness […] Suparak’s media archaeology interrogates imaginaries of AI”
Looping video that collages footage from 30 years of futuristic sci-fi movies and television shows that employ a fetishized tropics trope.
Series of projects, performances, and texts on how white filmmakers envision futures inflected by Asian culture, but devoid of significant Asian people. A visual analysis of 60 years of mainstream science-fiction cinema.
A history of the team and how it intertwines with civic issues, particularly: gun laws and violence, business and labor, real estate and gentrification, race, and class.
An installation superimposing the goals of six major sports, creating an actual-scale “color field” abstraction.
A full-scale graph / “mountain range” mural charting the snowfall in Syracuse over the last half century, and mounds of deicers which “melted” as winter outside progressed and visitors inside took away samples.
Interactive project inspired by Marcel Duchamp’s readymade “In Advance of the Broken Arm.” As a munificent reversal of this historic Dadaist work, the display is rendered useful again, allowing visitors to borrow the commercially made tools from an art gallery in the deepest winter months.
Astria Suparak 