ACCELERATOR
Sarah Brophy
Climate Monsters, 2024
Climate Monsters is an Augmented Reality installation and illustrated narrative by Accelerator Cohort 6 artist Sarah Brophy, co-created with the Mendell Elementary School kindergarten classes. The project draws inspiration from the literary genre of speculative fiction that explores compelling “what ifs” about worlds and human societies both familiar and imagined, including works like A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers, Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler, and Octavia’s Brood, an anthology of short stories edited by Walidah Imarisha and adrienne maree brown. As fictional stories allow us to confront the seemingly unexplainable, make overwhelming subjects digestible, and write new possibilities into existence, Climate Monsters allows us to absorb the urgency of climate risk and consider potential solutions to an overwhelming problem with new perspective.
Climate Monsters is strategically sited along the Harborwalk to acknowledge Boston’s water-related climate vulnerability as a coastal city.
LOCATION
ACCELERATOR
Sarah Brophy
Sarah Brophy (she | her)is a new media artist exploring tensions in the built environment where western science, the natural world, and technology collide. In her constructed animated worlds she pulls at the strings of her own flawed relationship with the natural environment through the wider lens of human co-dependence with computers. Often searching for what gets lost or gained in the transfer from physical object to intangible pixel, Sarah’s work wrestles with the contradictory feelings of awe and disenchantment with contemporary technology and asks questions about power, agency, and futurity within interwoven organic and synthetic systems.
Sarah’s projects have been exhibited in public art venues including The Berlin Festival of Lights, 150 Media Stream, and ILLUMINUS. She received her MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and her BA in Studio Arts from Bard College. Sarah is also a designer for the architecture firm Perkins&Will.