What Comes After

What Comes After, our 2021–2022 winter exhibition, presents ten artists throughout the seven floors of Maxon Mills who are, in one way or another, reflecting on life in the aftermath — no cause, all effect.

On the first floor, Roxanne Jackson's creatures of the after-world preside over an 800 lb raw clay monument to the death of pop culture, Kristen Schiele looks back on moments of dance floor abandon and forward to hunkering down in a shimmering Techno Bunker, and Luis Edgar Mejicanos' magical realist paintings flip from tradition to tradition, home to home — chapters of summer before your ascent into the cold mill tower. On the second floor, Ashley Epps' neon works present the tangled afterglow of our past visions of the future as imagined in science-fiction, fantasy, and horror films from the 70s and 80s. On the third floor, LaTonia Allen's paintings envision a future where Black women's bodies aren't policed and politicized, while Zachary Fabri's video installation bends space and time to dodge police bullets. On the fourth floor, Woomin Kim transforms short-lived crafted materials (toilet paper, faux fur, embroidery) into long-lived rocks and minerals (akanthite, coalingite, goethite). On the fifth floor, Kim replicates the experience of browsing through overflowing South Korean markets in a floating wall of quilts, and Dana Robinson's silken dye paintings recreate artificial moments of Black intimacy found in magazines, blurring and protecting the delicate glimpses of life behind the models' glances. On the sixth floor, Natalia Arbelaez offers another magical realist moment with clay sculptures that mine historical research, familial narratives, and cartoon culture to tell stories of loss and gain. And on the seventh floor, Taha Clayton's Soldier of Love painting stands alone in a field of grass, prepared for whatever comes next.