Shaper of God Book Launch

In celebration of American Artist’s new book , please join Pioneer Works for a special conversation between Artist and Martine Syms, moderated by Zainab Aliyu.

Published on the occasion of Artist’s titular exhibition, Shaper of God culminates a multi-year and multidisciplinary project inspired by the life and work of science fiction writer Octavia E. Butler. Edited by Aliyu, the book delves into three pivotal themes of Butler's oeuvre: the role of Pasadena and Los Angeles, with their distinct academic, scientific, and natural landscapes, in shaping her imaginative storytelling; the profound impact of her maternal family's migration, evidenced in her writing by themes of aspiration, labor, and displacement; and her critical engagement with space exploration, interrogating its implications for Black and Indigenous communities. Within this volume, contributions by Taylor Renee Aldridge, Lou Cornum, Tananarive Due, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Ayana A. Jamieson, and Fred Moten are paired with a rich compilation of diverse media by Artist. 

Together, Artist and Syms—who were born and raised several blocks apart in Altadena, the neighborhood directly north of Pasadena—will explore the ways in which the specificities of their origins have shaped their respective practices, as well as their own approaches to research and artmaking. The conversation will dovetail into a book signing by Artist.

About the Panelists

American Artist makes thought experiments that mine the history of technology, race and knowledge production, beginning with their legal name change in 2013. Their artwork primarily takes the form of sculpture, software and video. Artist is a recipient of the 2024 Trellis Art Fund and the New York City Artadia Award. They are a grantee of Creative Capital and the Herb Alpert Award in Visual Art. They are a former resident of Smack Mellon, Red Bull Arts Detroit, Abrons Art Center, Recess, EYEBEAM, Pioneer Works and the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program. They have exhibited at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Studio Museum in Harlem, Kunsthalle Basel, Switzerland and the Nam June Paik Art Center, Seoul. Their work has been featured in The New York Times, Cultured, Artforum and Art in America. Artist is on the board of the School for Poetic Computation and is a faculty at the Yale School of Art.

Martine Syms is an artist who has earned wide recognition for a practice that combines conceptual grit, humor, and social commentary. She has shown extensively including exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. She has also done commissioned work for brands such as Louis Vuitton, Prada, Nike, and Celine, among others. She is a recipient of the Herb Alpert Award, the Creative Capital Award, a United States Artists fellowship, the Tiffany Foundation award, the Future Fields Art Prize and is a 2023 Guggenheim Fellow. Syms is the writer and director of The African Desperate (MUBI), which was the closing night film of New Directors/New Films 2022 and nominated for an Independent Spirit Award in 2023.

About the Moderator

Zainab “Zai” Aliyu is a Nigerian-American artist, designer and cultural worker living in Lenapehoking (Brooklyn, NY). Her work explores the cybernetic and temporal entanglements within societal dynamics to understand how all sociotechnological systems of control are interconnected, and how we are all materially implicated through time. She draws upon her body as a corporeal archive and site of ancestral memory to craft counter-narratives through sculptures, videos, installations, virtual environments, publications, archives, and social practice. Zai is a 2025–28 Jerome Hill Artist Fellow and former co-director of the School for Poetic Computation. Her work has been presented internationally at Gardiner Museum (Toronto, Canada), Vienna Design Week (Vienna, Austria), Film at Lincoln Center (New York, NY), Museum of Modern Art (New York, NY), Smack Mellon (Brooklyn, NY), Miller ICA (Pittsburgh, PA), Centre for Heritage, Arts and Textile (Hong Kong, China), among others. She has been awarded residencies at Pioneer Works (New York, NY), MASS MoCA (North Adams, MA), Haystack Mountain School of Crafts (Deer Isle, ME), The Luminary (St. Louis, MI), Casa do Povo (São Paulo, Brazil), and Pocoapoco (Oaxaca, Mexico), among others. 

Host or Publisher Pioneer Works