​Image courtesy of St. Catherine University student Karla Scherber. (Untitled, oil on canvas, 16" x 20")

Call for art: The Catherine G. Murphy Gallery invites artists to participate in Speculative Futures, Present Imaginations, a virtual community art exhibition celebrating the visionary writings of Octavia E. Butler (1947-2006).

This exhibition complements the annual conference of the Octavia E. Butler Literary Society, presented online and co-sponsored by the Abigail Quigley McCarthy Center for Women at St. Catherine University, in honor of International Women’s Day. This year’s conference, The Confluence: Octavia E. Butler at the Intersection of Cultural Critique and Climate Collapse, takes place March 6-7, 2021, and will recognize the work of Butler through scholarship, discussion, community engagement and art.

Artists exploring any of the following themes are encouraged to submit 1-3 images of artwork for this virtual exhibition:

• Afrofuturism
• Antiracism
• Alternate theologies and spiritualities
• Cyborgs and the Posthuman
• Climate change and collapse
• Community organization
• Disability studies
• Indigenous sovereignty
• Institutional transformation
• LGBTQIA+ explorations
• Mapping and cartography
• Migration
• Pleasure activism
• Utopian and dystopian imaginings

Please note that all submissions are subject to curation by gallery staff, both technical and contextual.

To participate: send 1-3 images (jpeg, 300 dpi, approximately 5x7”) to [email protected] along with your name, the artwork title, medium and dimensions. You may also provide a brief artist statement or share any information you would like viewers to know about your work. (150 words or less, please.) Submission deadline: February 15, 2021.

About this exhibition: Butler’s work, which falls mainly in the genre of speculative fiction, has remained startlingly relevant for decades, and even more so in recent years, as our national and global communities wrestle with issues of climate change, polarizing politics and racist violence. Today, Butler’s extraordinary imaginings of future realities appear less speculative and ever more present. The Octavia E. Butler Society explains:
“Octavia E. Butler’s work continues to be a catalyst for scholars, artists, and activists to engage contemporary issues that are shaped by our nation’s legacies of colonialism and capitalism. Offering visions of apocalypse shepherded by diverse characterizations of leadership, much of Butler’s work urges aspirational engagement with the myriad dimensions of our current cultural polarization and the devastating consequences of climate collapse. Her critical representations of the environment, sexuality, race, gender, politics, and many other topics have established her as a revolutionary thinker, and her influence cannot be contained by the traditional categories and boundaries in which knowledge is typically organized.”
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Questions: contact Nicole Watson, Gallery Director, [email protected]

In celebration of International Women's Day the conference registration fees for the 2021 virtual conference are waived. Presenters will still need to join the society and attendees will still need to register. We ask that attendees consider supporting the society by becoming members. Click on SOCIETY MEMBERSHIPS to join.
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REGISTRATION OPENS January 19, 2021.