Atlanta artist Fabian Williams imagines the future in ‘Mothership Sirius B’

Fabian Williams has spent years painting Atlanta’s history across the city’s walls. Now, he wants Atlantans to think about what comes next.

The North Carolina-born artist, who also goes by “Occasional Superstar,” is best known for murals that explore Black history, culture and politics. His work includes a larger-than-life mural of civil rights activist Hosea Williams in Old Fourth Ward and a South Atlanta portrayal of the 1906 Atlanta Race Massacre.

But inside his latest project, “Mothership Sirius B,” Williams turns his attention toward the future and the choices being made today that could shape it.

The interactive, three-floor exhibition at 12 Jackson St. in Edgewood features 51 original works and takes visitors on a journey through three eras: the 1950s through the 1970s, or “what it was”; the 1980s through the 2000s, “what it is”; and an imagined future, “what it’s gon’ be.”

Through reworked science-fiction imagery, artificial intelligence, lenticular art and his own invented system of hieroglyphics, Williams explores race, immigration, gender, surveillance, corporate power and technology while asking visitors to consider what kind of future they want to create.

For Williams, a self-proclaimed history and Afrocentric studies nerd and lifelong science-fiction fan, the idea grew from his uneasiness about how quickly technologies he once encountered only in movies were becoming part of everyday life.

“I was 10 years old when I saw “The Terminator” for the first time,” Williams said. “AI and robots were a foreign concept to me, and the only thing that allowed me to sleep that night was that none of it was real.”

Years later, Williams found himself increasingly discussing those concerns with his wife, Sindy Guerrero-Williams, who eventually challenged him to do something with them.

“I’ve been a sci-fi fan since I was a kid, and a lot of the themes that I saw as a child ended up coming real close to where we are right now,” Williams said. “She convinced me to stop complaining, and turn it into art. That’s how the show came about.”

How the mothership came to be

While Williams is the lead artist behind the project, the exhibition became a family collaboration with his wife, Guerrero-Williams, serving as co-producer and creative director.

Guerrero-Williams, an entrepreneur and founder of Dance 411 Studios, said creating together has long been a natural part of their relationship.

“We create together, but for us it’s not a job, for us it’s not planned,” Guerrero-Williams said. “It is really just our everyday life.”

Williams said his wife often pushes him to see possibilities he might otherwise overlook.

“She balances me in a way and just introduces me to things that I’m just not thinking about and not considering,” Williams said. “And that always sparks new ideas and new avenues of creativity.”

The exhibition’s name draws from the Dogon people of Mali and traditions surrounding their knowledge of the Sirius star system. The exhibition describes “Mothership Sirius B” as a celebration of the idea that marginalized communities have long possessed knowledge and ways of imagining the future that have often been overlooked.

Williams and Guerrero-Williams also brought other Atlanta-area artists into the project, including University of Georgia freshman Lakin Beck, neon artist and business owner Vyvyan Hughes, and visual artist and educator Lori Smith.

Together, they helped Williams build a world that uses the past and present as a starting point for imagining what might come next.

Read the rest at uatl.com!