asphodels, ailsa ny, 2026

Asphodels is a participatory installation that asks the viewer to hold ritual, labor, and the promise of collective pleasure together without resolving them. The instruction above gradually produces a space of accumulation and residue intermixed the repeated porcelain figure. The figure was derived from a text-to-image prompt* performed by DALL·E 2, OpenAI’s original text-to-image model using the prompt. It was then translated into a mold used to produce repeated variations. Through the labor of repetition, the molds gradually deteriorated, producing larger seams that spread across the figure’s surface, inspiring the exhibition title.

Asphodelus is a flower whose symbolism is tied to it’s role as food for common people suspended in the afterlife. In the the mythological asphodel fields time was thought to remain indefinitely in late afternoon, and ordinary people—who lived lives that were neither remarkably heroic nor wicked—resided for eternity.


What does a person, forever freed from work by promises of new technologies do in such a suspended weekend of humanity?




Notes:

festivity

residue

futility

promise

pleasure




* “Create a propaganda porcelain figure of how a Russian person sees an American person”