Dystopian visions of resistance and rage — this is often where imagining the future leads us, to worsening versions of our present fears. But artists working within Indigenous futurism can see things differently, like Choctaw artist Benjy Russell. With fishing line, flowers, mirrors and light, in photography, gardening and sculpture, he divines queer utopias.
Floral arrangements appear like altars in the night, and a forest gleams with sparkles. “I feel a sense of joy and hope in the future,” Russell tells the Scene . “When given present-day circumstances, there’s not a lot of joy to be found.
” He creates his art from the perspective of a future where all these problems have been solved. “The ideas of gender and sexuality labels are something for now because it’s something we’ve had, and I feel like rage is definitely for now. But building toward queer utopia, you have to realize that we’re going to be past a lot of that, hopefully.
” Best Photography Exhibition In rural DeKalb County, Russell has an idyllic cabin and a stretch of land where his riotous, rhapsodic garden is the subject and setting for his art, as well as backdrop for the portraiture he provides pro bono to queer sex workers. His yard is a quarter-acre of flowers that he planted after his husband Sterling died, the seeds mixed with his ashes. From 2021 to 2022, Russell invited people to visit his garden installation A Cowboy Riding a Beam of Light , for which he printed and hung 15 of his .
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