Adrian Burrell
Stay Alive: A Message From the Future, 2020

triptych, Aluminum prints
19” x 36” each

Artwork Statement:

Stay Alive: A Message From the Future is a series of photographs on aluminum documenting a performance in which I used found materials to build a time machine. During the summer of 2020, amid worldwide protests brought on by George Floyd’s murder, I began making this performance into an experimental film, The Dandelions, from which these images are taken. In The Dandelions, my character uses a time machine to escape an alien invasion. The machine functions like an ark, making it possible to send a message of deliverance from a chaotic future to our chaotic present. Despite witnessing their own moment of desperation and upheaval, our descendants reach back to the present to let us know: Gravity is a time machine, and pressure creates new possibilities. Your struggle, your resistance wasn’t for naught.

Artist Bio:

Adrian L. Burrell is a third-generation Oakland artist who uses photography, film, and installation to examine issues of race, class, gender, and intergenerational dynamics. His work has been recognized by SF Camerawork and YBCA, and, most recently, exhibited at SFMOMA. A USMC veteran, Adrian has lived and worked on four continents and served as an educator in San Francisco, teaching film to youth in detention. He is currently earning his MFA from Stanford’s Department of Art & Art History.