Adventure JournalSFMOMA Exhibition opening July 1, 2024
Fortuna and the Immortality Garden (Machine)
A Respite for the Weary Time-Traveler.
Featuring a Rite of Ancient Intelligence
Carried out by The Gardeners
Toward the Continued Improvement of the
Human Specious
by
Kara E-Walker
Kara Walker, study for Fortuna and the Immortality Garden (Machine), 2023-2024; © Kara Walker, courtesy the artist, Sikkema Jenkins & Co., and Sprüth Magers.
In early 2023, we were introduced to artist Kara Walker by our mutual friends at Peace & Plenty Farm. She had visited Obsidian Ridge Vineyard, and was interested in using obsidian stones in a large-scale installation she was creating for the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. One year later, we excavated 18 yards of obsidian to be washed and crated to downtown San Francisco. On July 1, 2024, we will finally get to see what she has created with it. We invite you to join us for the public opening from 4pm-6pm. Free with RSVP here.
from SFMOMA site:
The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) announced its forthcoming installation by artist Kara Walker in the museum’s admission-free, street-level Roberts Family Gallery will open to the public on July 1, 2024, and remain on view through Spring 2026.
Kara Walker has long been recognized for her incisive examinations of the dynamics of power and the exploitation of race and sexuality. Her work leverages expressions of fantasy and humor to confront troubling histories and dominant narratives, repossessing control in the process. Inspired by a wide range of sources, from antique dolls to Octavia Butler’s novel Parable of the Sower, Walker’s new commission, Fortuna and the Immortality Garden (Machine), considers the memorialization of trauma, the objectives of technology, and the possibilities of transforming the negative energies that plague contemporary society. Here, automatons trapped in a never-ending cycle of ritual and struggle are repositories of the human soul. They recall mechanized medieval icons that evidenced divinity, vitality, and the promise of faith. Situated within an energetically charged field of black obsidian from Mt. Konocti in Lake County — a volcanic glass with deep spiritual properties — Walker’s Gardeners evoke wonder, reflection, respite, and hope. Just past this prophetic vignette, the installation’s namesake, Fortuna, responds to each visitor with a choreographed gesture and a printed fortune fresh from her mouth — an offering of absolution and contemplation.
