through imagery and material form. We see land before and after the disasters of human intervention––under the sign of progress––in the series, before the wake (2015), in which Burns scrawls upon found photographs documenting the site before the building of Lake Powell in the Utah Desert; and the misleading beauty of a solar eclipse in the film Untitled (eclipse) (2019) , which Burns counters with a disconnected soundtrack. As Small notes in her catalogue essay, the project’s eponymous “negative space” stands as both a reference to the chasms of the American Dream––of those left out, of those who do not fit its narrow definition––while operating as a path of resistance, “a site of infinite potentialities which could emerge from the realm of nothingness” [italics in original]. As Small concludes, “from a subordinate position, agency may be found.” Thematically and structurally, the speculative possibilities of science fiction thus strategically operate in Burns’ invented world: as the artist’s works encourage the imagining of an alternative place in the present, one of endless possibility. As such, the exhibition seeks to grant a degree of agency to the beholder, who not only views the works in question, but navigates themwith improvisa- tional acts, generating their own moments of intrusion: their own filling of negative space. On behalf of the MODA Program and the Department of Art History and Archaeology at Columbia University, I congratulate Emily Small for this thought-provoking exhibition, and extend thanks to A.K. Burns, and the entire staff of the Wallach Art Gallery, for their collaborative efforts.
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