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In the Adjacent Possible

April 5, 2022–February 19, 2023
In the Adjacent Possible installation view at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center, 2022; works by Nyugen E. Smith. Courtesy of the artist.

In the Adjacent Possible is a response to sociologist Ruha Benjamin’s suggestion to “imagine and craft the worlds you cannot live without, just as you dismantle the ones you cannot live within.”

Each of the five artists’ installations provides a vantage point for viewing the many potentialities that lie just beyond what we know. They conjure worlds that are not quite here, yet are within our grasp. They place us in the adjacent possible, a space where we can dream alternative ways of being in the world.

The exhibition forms a speculative architecture that explores myriad approaches to and understandings of proposed and promised strategies of living. These artists offer prospective blueprints of other worlds, often constructed from the remnants of our current one. Engaging issues of colonialism, feminism, queerness, identity, and stereotypes, In the Adjacent Possible suggests ways we can reimagine the present and explores the infinite horizon of opportunities at the boundaries of our reach.

Artists included in the exhibition are Jessica Campbell, Yasmine K. Kasem, Suchitra Mattai, Haleigh Nickerson, and Nyugen E. Smith.

View the Gallery Handout

The Artists

In the Adjacent Possible is supported by the Kohler Trust for Arts and Education, the Frederic Cornell Kohler Charitable TrustKohler Foundation, Inc., and the Wisconsin Arts Board with funds from the State of Wisconsin and the National Endowment for the Arts 

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