outside of normal perceptions. Small in collaboration with the artist, employs sampling to shape this pursuit differently through the relational connections between the artworks themselves. For her work on Burns’ metaphysical exploration of the natural world in the age of the Anthropocene, Small finds the fissures that conjoin Burns’ aesthetic conjectures with the science fiction of the present. Negative space is an opening to a spiritual quest that eludes language—a quest to grasp a state of becoming. A.K. Burns implicitly considers a range of applications of the term “negative space.” As Small restates, this term refers to the space around an object. It has come to represent absence, what the object is not. The significance of this so-called negative or void is that it puts pressure on that which is deemed the object, that is, presence itself. Yet, this binary is itself a misnomer. Timothy Morton, the speculative realism philosopher dissolves the binary with his identification of hyperobjects—that is, all kind of temporal and spatial dimensions, as a refute of traditional ideas about what can be an object. In other realms negative space, let’s say, the black hole’s gravitational force, was long misunderstood as without substance, while in reality it pulls stuff in. This and other outer space phenomena make spaces for the rule breaking alternative and fantastic worlds associated with science fiction. The annual MODA Curates series offered by the Wallach Art Gallery and the M.A. program in Modern Art: Critical and Curatorial Studies (MODA), recognizes outstanding curatorial proposals from students related to their theses. MODA Curatorial Fellows benefit from their experiences at the Gallery early in their careers. My hope is that those experiences form a solid foundation for future endeavors. The pedagogical process of marshaling the student’s talents and ambitions to support the development of their curatorial ideas is emergent from the mentorship of the MODA program to the Wallach Art Gallery’s active role in shepherding the exhibition through the curatorial process. Our colleague Janet Kraynak, director of the MODA program in the Department of Art History and Archaeology at Columbia University, partners with the Gallery to advise the MODA Curatorial Fellows, providing valued scholarly leadership and collegial collaboration. She is also Smalls’ advisor and a reader for the essay included in this publication. We extend our thanks to Jack Halberstam, director for Columbia University’s Institute for Research on Women, Gender and Sexuality who has generously agreed to participate in the exhibition’s public programming. Generous support for Small’s exhi- bition project was received from the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences for which we are grateful. Finally, we congratulate Emily for putting together such an innovative and provocative exhibition, and the artist, A.K. Burns for sharing her work with our visitors.
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