Climate Storytelling 2075
Volume II
Anastasia Achieng Onyango
〰️
Byssan Samny
〰️
Cindy J. Xie
〰️
Crystal R. Barajas Rivera
〰️
Anastasia Achieng Onyango 〰️ Byssan Samny 〰️ Cindy J. Xie 〰️ Crystal R. Barajas Rivera 〰️
Elizabeth Dawson
〰️
Harmony Richards
〰️
Invasive Art Initiative
〰️
Kristen Howard
〰️
Elizabeth Dawson 〰️ Harmony Richards 〰️ Invasive Art Initiative 〰️ Kristen Howard 〰️
Laiyonelth Hurtado
〰️
Lovinia Summer
〰️
Makayla Harrison
〰️
Mariana Castro Azpíroz
〰️
Laiyonelth Hurtado 〰️ Lovinia Summer 〰️ Makayla Harrison 〰️ Mariana Castro Azpíroz 〰️
Michael R. Dudley Jr.
〰️
Pamela Lira
〰️
Rachel Cranmer
〰️
Robin Moulton
〰️
Michael R. Dudley Jr. 〰️ Pamela Lira 〰️ Rachel Cranmer 〰️ Robin Moulton 〰️
Shirene Shomloo
〰️
Summer Dean
〰️
Victoria Fauve Desvaux
〰️
Yumi Rodriguez
〰️
Shirene Shomloo 〰️ Summer Dean 〰️ Victoria Fauve Desvaux 〰️ Yumi Rodriguez 〰️
Explore Climate Storytelling 2075: Volume II
-
Astonishing Light
A photography series by Shirene Shomloo
-
Caretakers' New Dictionary
A speculative zine dictionary by Mariana Castro Axpíroz
-
Colore
A short story by Lovinia Summer and Robin Moulton
-
Echoes of Protection: Bottle Tree 2075
A multimedia installation by Kristen Howard
-
Farmer Armor
A garment design and film by Harmony Richards
-
Imagínate Los Ángeles
A short documentary by Crystal R. Barajas Rivera
-
KARTAng-Isip
A climate fiction and speculative map by Pamela Lira
-
Letters on Care
A story through letters by Cindy J. Xie
-
Litha
A wearable sculpture by Elizabeth Dawson
-
The Living Thread
A multi-sensory installation exploring the role of fashion and ecology in 2075 by Summer Dean and Laiyonelth Hurtado
-
MIDWEST GIRL ARCHIVE 2075
A multimedia photo installation by Makayla Harrison
-
my grandma's garden: beyond resilience
An immersive installation by Anastasia Achieng Onyango
-
The Red Door
A short story and accompanying score by Michael R. Dudley Jr.
-
Silence of Echoes
A film, text, and textile work by Byssan Samny
-
Snag
A short story and sculptures by Rachel Cranmer
-
solarpunk table 2075
An artwork and replicable framework by Victoria Fauve Desvaux
-
A Story of Survival on Altered Islands
An illustrated zine and sculpture by Invasive Art Initiative
-
The Yumiverse
A multimedia illustration, mural and animation series by Yumi Rodriguez
Astonishing Light
a photography series by
Shirene Shomloo
Shirene Shomloo’s “Astonishing Light" is a photographic meditation on the teachings of resilience from the desert through the lens of the Iranian diaspora. The artist draws on the inherited memory of the deserts of the middle east as home, transposing a trust between the land and the self built over generations to the deserts of southern california. These landscapes are at the frontlines of climate change, with rising temperatures and changing rainy seasons putting added pressure on already strained ecosystems. This scarcity of resources has developed within the habitat a bone-deep ability to adapt. In this photo series, the artist’s body is melded into the landscape, to embrace the topologies and the forms that have allowed flora, fauna, and native peoples of deserts across the world to thrive for thousands of years.
“Astonishing Light” challenges preconceived notions of the desert as an isolated wasteland, and instead embraces it as a model for persistence and survival in the face of climate and social adversity. The work is especially affected by rising violence against Iran and its diaspora, a people as misunderstood as the lands they come from - through the piece, the artist expresses their own grief at the need for a resilience in the face of social and climatic violence against their people, as well as hope and certainty of a future where the beauty and exposure of the desert is treated with respect, autonomy, and care.
“Astonishing Light” envisions a future where we have learned the lessons the desert is trying to teach us and we embody those truths: that in scarcity we may in fact find abundance, that resilience in a changing world is found by moving with the forms and truths of the earth, not against them.
Caretakers’ New Dictionary
an experimental dictionary by
Mariania Castro Azpíroz
Mariana Castro Azpíroz’s “Caretakers’ New Dictionary” is a zine that uses speculative writing to imagine which terms would be commonly used in 2075 if we lived in her vision of a desirable climate future: centered around ethics of care, arts of noticing, and multispecies kinship. The piece highlights the power of language in shaping our understanding and relationships with the environment and other beings (of every species). It invites the audience to engage in decolonizing the English language by questioning and reflecting upon the concepts behind current words, challenging the way language is presently being used, and playing with the creation of new vocabulary through generative prompts.
Creatively using the form of dictionary entries, “Caretakers’ New Dictionary” presents novel terms, showcases words from other languages that provide valuable perspectives, and explores relevant existing terms in the English language: from the obsolete to the recently coined.
Colore
a short story by
Lovinia Summer
& Robin Moulton
Surviving the climate crisis is a practice of world building. We build worlds in which our communities thrive and survive. Storytelling and science fiction play the role of making those worlds feel tangible and enticing. Colore is the story of two communities separated by time but experiencing crises that require a shift outside normal survival strategies. In Hallu in 2030, Amanya (or Ami) discovers a fungi that can help enable communication and goods transfer - allowing for the establishment of a mutual aid network. Forty-five years later in the same region, Quinton later rediscovers the network when a hurricane nearly wrecks his way of life. The story answers the question of how we might survive in a future where we face the crises of a collapsing ecosystem fueled by greed and extraction. It imagines nature and place based solutions as methods for survival. Lovinia and Robin contributed their imaginations to the story, each taking a community-world to build. Christine brings the story to life with vibrant images. This short story is a quick foray into what we hope is a hopeful future.
Echoes of Protection:
Bottle Tree 2075
a multimedia installation by
Kristen Howard
Echoes of Protection: Bottle Tree 2075 is a mixed-media digital installation inspired by the enduring legacy of Southern Black folk traditions, Hoodoo, and West African cosmologies. Drawing from the symbolic bottle trees prominent in southern gardens, the artwork reimagines the traditional blue bottles—believed to capture spirits and shield homes from harm—as luminous digital vessels against a darkened backdrop. Each glowing bottle contains rendered vignettes of preserved ecological memory, invoking both ancestral wisdom and visions of environmental stewardship in a speculative 2075. Through its synthesis of organic form, vibrant color, and immersive light, this piece honors the protective powers ascribed to bottle trees and proposes a future in which honoring nature is synonymous with honoring ancestry and community.
Farmer Armor
a garment design & film by
Harmony Richards
Farmer Armor draws on the visual language of artist Richards’ mixed Japanese and Filipino heritage—symbols like the Filipino flag, the Japanese red sun, hakama pants, and the straw hats worn by Filipino cowboys. These cultural references are woven into the imagined landscapes of California farms, where they meet subtle nods to Americana. The final silhouette of the work is grounded in over 80 hours of field research across several months, during which Richards interviewed agricultural workers about what they might wear in the future. Their stories and visions shaped a narrative that was brought to life using secondhand garments and reclaimed fabric. The result is a piece of speculative workwear—part fantasy, part lived experience. Each element of the outfit was built from reused materials, embodying a patchwork of memory, resilience, and imagination.
An accompanying video deepens the narrative, following a figure farming in a surreal, future landscape. Walking through avocado groves, they wear not just clothing, but the layered hopes and histories of today’s farmworkers.
Imagínate Los Ángeles
a film by
Crystal R. Barajas Rivera
Imagínate Los Ángeles is a short documentary in Spanish that centers on voices from the artist’s neighborhood. Through simple but profound questions–"Si pudieras imaginarte el futuro, cómo sería?" (“If you could imagine the future, what would it look like?”) and “Cómo imaginas el futuro climático o el medio ambiente?” (“How do you imagine the climate future or the environment?”)—the film invites everyday people to imagine and share their visions of the future. Their responses are compiled and accompanied by English captions to make it accessible to a wider audience.
The work not only documents spoken words but also captures the immediate environment of each interviewee. Storefronts, sidewalks, murals, and the environments of Los Angeles’ streets become part of the narrative, grounding each imaginative response within a lived place. This approach allows viewers to feel both the presence of the speakers and the community they live in.
The artist’s role in shaping this work is deeply rooted in place and identity. Having grown up in Koreatown, she created Imagínate Los Ángeles using only her iPhone and a microphone, walking just a few blocks from her home to engage with neighbors willing to share their voices. Her position as a Spanish-speaking resident of Los Angeles uniquely situates her to bridge linguistic, cultural, and geographic divides. By recording these local conversations, she elevates perspectives that are often underrepresented in dominant media portrayals of the city, while also acknowledging that many voices in her neighborhood remain unheard. Her goal is to create space for imagination as an act of resistance and care.
KARTAng-Isip
a climate fiction & speculative map by
Pamela Lira
Project KARTAng-Isip is an act of imaginative cartography, mapping the possible futures of the Philippines through the lens of climate fiction. Borrowing from kathang-isip (fiction) and karta (map), this anthology of short stories envisions the archipelago’s future over the next 50 years, exploring the diverse realities of each region.
The first story, Of Steams & Storms, is set in the Philippines’ Eastern Visayas in the year 2075. The region comprising Leyte, Samar, and Biliran stands at the heart of typhoon landfalls with its landscape cut by the Leyte Fault; however, after decades of disaster, the long-whispered myths of Biringan now emerge as a renewable energy utopia. Through the eyes of Paula, a young Biringan intern, the story follows Eli, a seasoned stormsaver, as they navigate a megatyphoon in a journey to reunite with a long-lost love.
At the heart of this work is countermapping, a method of reclaiming space, voice, and vision. The Philippines, consistently among the most vulnerable countries in the world, is often depicted only through the lens of disaster. Project KARTANG-ISIP disrupts that narrative by charting a different map: one where Filipino communities are not merely victims of disasters, but changemakers.
The accompanying map, built from Copernicus DEM data, reimagines Eastern Visayas through animated geovisualization. It is an ode to the 1734 Murillo-Velarde map—hailed as the “Mother of all Philippine Maps”—bridging historical cartography with speculative storytelling of the Philippines’ futures.
In merging storytelling with spatial imagination, it frames the climate crisis as a question of who decides what the future looks like? Who gets to survive, adapt, and thrive? It also asks: What could a just, livable future look like in a country where climate disasters have become the rhythm of life? In every story that will follow, the environment and climate becomes both context and character: a force that reshapes land, love, memory, and the very structure of society.
Letters On Care
a story through letters by
Cindy J. Xie
"Letters on Care" is an epistolary story written in the form of letters between two sisters, separated in childhood by their parents' return migration, in the year 2075. The piece alternates between memories of their past, as well as vignettes from their current work as a public health practitioner and an environmental artist, respectively.
Through an interweaving of planetary crises with personal narrative, the story asks how we bring the impacts of climate change down to the human scale, and what care between individuals and community members looks like in the face of growing uncertainty. Contrasting against universalizing narratives of environmental and climate crisis, small windows into daily life reveal the actions of care we take for ourselves and others as avenues of survival, and resistance.
Litha
a wearable sculpture and costume by
Elizabeth Dawson
This West African inspired mask and accompanying garment venerates the body of the Cowrie Snail. Through traditions of dance and ritual across Africa, it is common for spiritual beings, deceased family members, and deities to be routinely remembered and honored. The Cowrie Snail’s history exploitation through commodification parallels that of enslaved African people around the continent amidst species endangerment from overharvesting, pollution, and other effects of tourism. This piece acts as a proposal to recognize the Cowrie as an ancestor, healing our related grief through movement and creativity. Using the motifs cultural significance as a symbol of abundance, this piece reminds us to honor our grief within oppressive capitalist systems that feed off of scarcity by remembering what is valuable to us as people. This way, we place our worth and those of living things around us as intrinsic rather than extrinsic, causing us to see ourselves and the world with more care. The future, regardless of the systems that run it, needs more routines that remind communities of their own values and commitments to nature. The artist believes that when these values are the foundations of a community, the world around us can change for the better.
The Living Thread
a multi-sensory installation by
Summer Dean
& Laiyonelth Hurtado
Placeholder text
MIDWEST GIRL
ARCHIVE 2075
a multimedia photography installation by
Makayla Harrison
Across the earth, for many years, we have been able to see the stars at night. With the rise of artificial light pollution, environmental racism, and climate change, we are losing our freedom and accessibility to connect with the stars. Makayla Harrison, a biracial British, African American multidisciplinary artist and Midwest girl, invites the viewer to imagine a future where freedom and access to the stars is not inhibited by light pollution. Through Harrison’s work, she transports viewers into an exhibition space in 2075 that highlights and reflects aspects of the Midwest Girl’s environment and life with dark sky access. Incorporated in the exhibition are photographs that the Midwest Girl made with negative and positive transparencies of galaxies millions of light years away, made with the cyanotype process at night.
Also featured is The MIDWEST GIRL ARCHIVE, an interactive book for 2075, that preserves journals, photographs, cyanotypes, postcards, found natural objects, and tools that a Midwest girl uses in the future — emphasizing the reality that we have started to plant, care, and maintain seeds for a world where we prioritize social and environmental justice in our day to day lives. Makayla also cultivates a space for written notes, poems, and small artworks from other Midwest girl artists within the archive that recall their future, imaginations, and ability to connect with one another in ways that allow us to live with our ecosystems and environments in 2075. Harrison thinks of the MWG archive just like the seed-keeping vaults in the Arctic. It is a way to ensure, for generations, the seeds of hope for tomorrow.
my grandma’s garden:
beyond resilience
a woven sculpture & installation by
Anastasia Onyango
“Me and you, we got more yesterday than anybody. We need some kind of tomorrow.”
~ Toni Morrison
By 2075, we will each have our own kind of tomorrow. By then, we will be beyond resilience. Because embedded in resilience is having to weather unfailingly the circumstances that have made us have to adapt. By then, we will no longer be in a state of survival mode but have achieved a dynamic with our surroundings that centers mutual care.
My grandma’s garden represents this lesson to me.
I have witnessed how my grandma tends to the cilantro saplings in her greenhouse before they get planted. How she can hear the sound of sweet potatoes under the earth before harvesting them. How she threshes the bean stalks after they have been sun dried. We are nourished by her garden’s maize, pumpkin leaves and green peas. And also the sisal plants, whose threads become baskets that we use daily. It’s this traditional Kamba practice of weaving that my grandma gifted me three years ago and it is through this medium that I most appreciate the generational love and knowledge espoused by her and the emotional connection she has to her land.
And given that I am still learning our language, she taught me all of this without English, without words.
This installation encapsulates that feeling of safety and sanctity. The feeling of being at home on this Earth...an all encompassing appreciation…because you can feel how an ecology is sacred…because you can feel an abundance of nourishment.
The Red Door
a story & score by
Michael R. Dudley, Jr.
“The Red Door” is an intermedial work of prose and sound that is an exploration of family, nostalgia, and optimism set in a future living with climate change. The two parts—a short story and musical selection—offer an intimate portrait of what life could be like for someone who was born into the climate crisis, not knowing what life was like before globalized climate migration and mitigation efforts. The story follows the protagonist, Theo, over the course of a few days as she commutes to work at a facility specializing in carbon capture by harnessing algae’s photosynthetic process. Sounds from the story are remediated to become part of a musical atmosphere to enhance the experience of the reader at their own leisure. It asks how our ideas about hope, labor, and giving may evolve over the next 50 years as we engage with loss, change, and different imagined futures, even within the same household.
Silence of Echoes
a film, book, and rug by
Byssan Samny
Placeholder text
Snag
a short story & shadowbox sculptures by
Rachel Cranmer
This project consists of a short story, Snag, and two shadow boxes. The story, beginning in 2030, follows the “afterlife” of a woman and others leaving a chaotic, decaying world to find their final resting place - so it seems. From that loss, new life emerges both naturally and through the efforts of all kinds of people from land stewards to artisans.
The shadowbox pictured here illustrates green, specifically woodland burial. The box is built by the artist and her mother from locally felled black walnut in Cincinnati, Ohio. A Bob Ross–style landscape painting uses oil paint made from pollution runoff from Ohio rivers. Inside, clay bones rest beneath soil from my garden, leaf litter from a favorite cemetery, and bee-friendly lawn seed. Roots and mycelium visibly weave through the earth. In the gallery, the grass will likely die, but the soil remains alive. Clay and moss trees escape the frame, referencing the story's themes of decay and entropy, juxtaposed against the vaults of traditional burial. In this scene are other story references: a multi-faith chapel, a walnut stump marking the protagonist, and wayfinding signs inviting viewers to imagine what a future cemetery could entail - a communal “third place” as cemeteries once were.
SOLARPUNK TABLE
2075
a dinner party template by
Victoria Fauve Desvaux
& Repair Collective
solarpunk table 2075 is an invitation to imagine desirable futures through a shared meal amidst collaborative speculative imagining. What would we be eating in a regenerative 2075?
The shared meal is accompanied by a speculative story [the playbook]; one composed of scenarios and series of events that bring us towards a regenerative year 2075. Invited guests have an active role; they are required to engage with this story prior to taking a seat at the table, and they are also invited to embody their 2075 self.
The dinner holds a menu that has been developed solely from local ingredients - speculation and extrapolation from scientific findings are at the center of the food design; the menu provides a grounded and multi-sensorial experience of this regenerative future.
Between each course and with suggestive prompts in the menu, the actively participating guests are invited to reflect on varying questions and discuss them collectively to help them shape their vision of this 2075.
solarpunk table 2075 is an artwork and a replicable framework; one that hopes to inspire varying iterations in order to start many more conversations and to help us embody desirable futures. Being able to imagine possible futures is the first step in going towards them. We invite you to use the playbook, to throw a dinner party: You can design a menu with ingredients from your locality that would make sense in a regenerative 2075, and invite your guests to reflect and imagine these regenerative futures together!
A Story of Survival
on Altered Islands
an illustrated zine & sculptures by
Invasive Art Initiative
The uninhibited exchange of organisms across terrains allows for a seemingly unrelenting interchange of plants and animals, previously unknown to the landscape, to carve new relations within these newfound communities. The illustrated zine, A Story of Survival on Altered Islands, trails its narrative through the unlikely paired story of English Plantain and the endangered Taylors’ Checkerspot Butterfly. Where colonization, dwindling food sources, and ecological devastation across the Gulf Islands have brought this insect near to the brink of extinction, the introduced Plantain has offered itself as ecological solace, allowing the Butterfly’s populations to rebound across continued generations within this changed landscape.
The dichotomy of disbelonging and seeded unification plays out along the pages, inviting readers into the lives of these insects and “weeds” by tracing their stories and histories. A spiral of butterflies in flight, comprised of Plantain-based paper, encircles the suspended booklets, melding these two species in visual relation. These newfound co-collaborators conjure questions of what it means to belong, the varied ways reciprocal relationships can take form, and what a just ecological future may look like across imagined borders and communities.
THE YUMIVERSE
a multimedia illustration, mural and animation series by
Yumi Rodriguez
Set in the year 2075, The Yumiverse reimagines Earth after nuclear war and ecological collapse, where long-standing power structures crumble and humanity is thrust into the realm of spirit. What was once 'background'—mushrooms, birds, insects, rivers, trees—now rise as sovereign. Giant ants walk as elders. Blades of grass sing. The Council of Trees no longer offers oxygen as spirit reclaims their breath; most humans, now droid-like, must earn breath through rituals of reverence, harvested from wildflowers blooming only in hidden fissures. Wooden totems are worn like prayer. Technology falters. The line between myth and matter dissolves.
In this world—reborn in the image of Earth’s oldest intelligences—survival is not conquest, but communion.
The Yumiverse unfolds through digital multimedia, storyboarding, and animation—mediums through which the artist weaves image, movement, and narrative into a living landscape of an imagined world. These visions appear like constellations, arriving in deep meditation to soothe anxiety or in sudden flashes during daily life. Mapping this inner terrain is an ongoing act of self discovery, self reflection, and world building—rooted in devotion for the shared world. Inviting viewers into this evolving landscape is a deeply personal gesture, offering not escape or apocalypse, but a remembering—a return to the transformative power of reciprocity, kinship, and listening. An invitation to imagine otherwise, and to begin again.