mayajeffereis

My art addresses the religious and scientific implications of apocalypse, multiracialism in America, and postcolonial class structures in India.

I am fascinated by both the prospect of apocalypse and how its ubiquity in science fiction literature and film influences society’s collective mind. Eschatology, the study of apocalypse in theology and philosophy, is found across cultures and religious traditions. In 1945, nuclear destruction became a potential threat. Today global warming replaces the nuclear bomb in its destructive power and the fear associated with such destruction.

My work proposes that humans may not be the consummate creation in evolution and provide an alternate ending to the biblical Last Judgment. In Hinduism, the god Shiva presides over life and death, and destruction is creative destruction, as it allows for new life. My collage series Shiva depicts the post-apocalyptic landscape after the polar ice caps raise the sea level and inundate coastal regions. The series imagines the subsequent metamorphosis of humans devolving into underwater creatures from the primordial soup. It shifts from the anthropocentric view that the world exists for humans and that progress is linear.

I am interested in the causes of climate crisis, the motivation for fear expressed through science fiction, and the question of moral responsibility in the fields of science and technology. In the 1965 Time-Life’s Early Man, Rudolph Zallinger presented the iconic March of Progress illustration of man evolving from ape-like ancestors. My March of Progress shows the myth of progress, which asserts that history and evolution do not advance in a linear progression. I

appropriate clips from sci-fi and horror films and archives of technological inventions from YouTube. Often the motivation behind both Sci Fi and horror is to warn about the hubris of playing God and the disaster that ensues. Yet, the irony of my video is that to satirize the religious morality opposing technological progress, the piece becomes a member of the moral genre, leaving the viewer to question if technological progress is harmful or helpful.

Additionally, as a woman of mixed Japanese-American and Anglo-Indian ancestry, my art challenges the roles of minority groups in America and notions of race in a globalized world. My piece Tanko Bushi is a modern adaptation of the Japanese Shinto and Buddhist traditional Bon Odori dancing. The original dance portrays a coal miner at work, while my Tanko Bushi represents an American office employee going about the routines of her day. I sought to shift the exoticism and foreign nature of the dance to mundane activities that real contemporary Asian Americans participate in.