Commonwealth and Council and Labor present Yannis window, a single-channel video installation by American Artist. Inspired by the science fiction author Octavia E. Butler’s 1993 novel Parable of the Sower and touching on the parallels between the author’s and the artist’s lives as Pasadena/Altadena natives, Yannis window explores various contemporary phenomena presaged by Butler: the turn towards authoritarian demagoguery and the privatization of public goods and services in the wake of ecological disaster and social collapse; the technologist impulse for space exploration and colonization; and the resurgence of racism, sexism, and xenophobia in times of political unrest.

An iterative, accretive work, Yannis window is comprised of discrete video episodes. Three completed episodes so far include: The arroyo seco (2022) a 1990s-style public access documentary about the area near Pasadena where Jet Propulsion Laboratories was founded and where both Butler and American Artist grew up; Christopher Donner (2024) a presidential campaign commercial with a candidate composite character of Donald Trump, Kanye West, and Christopher Donner; and Alicia Catalina Godinez Leal (2024) a news report on the death of an astronaut character from Parable of the sower. The episodes are played on a translucent screen with a window frame in the American Craftsman style commonly found in Pasadena. Mentioned in the novel, the window television belongs to a once-wealthy family’s home in the fortified neighborhood in which the protagonist Lauren Olamina lives in 2024, when Parable of the sower begins.

Yannis window originally debuted at REDCAT in 2022 and was most recently exhibited at the Biennale de l’Image en Mouvement 2024 at Centre d’Art Contemporain, Geneva, with a newly commissioned episode.

Writer and Director, American Artist; Producer, Chester Toye; Director of Photography, Corey Gegner; First Assistant Camera, Celeste Barbosa; Key Grip, Danny Green; Gaffer, Kristin Steusloff; Editor, Bryan Monroe Simpson; Visual Effects, Jonathan Manni; Sound Mixer, Tomasso Pompei; Post-Production Sound Mixer, Andrew Siedenburg; Production Designer, Jesse Hoffman; Props Assistant, Haley Castro; Production Assistants, Ethan Duffy, Gabriela Freid, Marion Tannis; Production Manager, Rafaela Sanchez; Christopher Donner, Ajuma Rahmaan; Megan Reed, Anna Dennis; Alicia Leal, Alondra Sanchez; Guadalupe Leal, Carolina Rivera Escamilla; Uncle, Rafael Escamilla; Neighbor, Ayana Jamieson; Neighbor's Child, Mars Jamieson; Astronauts, Taylor Aldridge, Kibum Kim, Joel Ferree.

American Artist (b. 1989, Altadena; lives and works in New York) received an MFA from The New School (2015), and a BFA from California Polytechnic University, Pomona (2011). Solo exhibitions have been held at REDCAT, Los Angeles (2022); Labor, Mexico City (2021); Commonwealth and Council, Los Angeles (2021); Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2020); Queens Museum (2019); Museum of the African Diaspora, San Francisco (2019); Koenig and Clinton, Brooklyn (2019); and Housing, New York (2018). Selected group exhibitions have been held at Centre d’art Contemporain Genève (2024); Guggenheim Museum (2023); Museum of Modern Art, New York (2023); Whitney Museum of American Art (2023); The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth (2023); Kunsthalle Basel (2021); San Jose Museum of Art (2020); Nam June Paik Art Center, Yongin (2020); MoMA PS1, Queens (2020); LC Queisser, Tbilisi (2019); The Studio Museum in Harlem (2019); Museum of Contemporary Art, Detroit (2019); Performance Space New York (2018); Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (2018); 47 Canal, New York (2018); and Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, New York (2017). American Artist is a recipient of Trellis Art Fund grant (2024); Creative Capital Award (2022), LACMA Art + Technology Lab grant (2021), and Queens Museum Jerome Foundation Fellowship (2019). American Artist has participated in residencies at Smack Mellon, Brooklyn (2021); Whitney Museum Youth Insights Program, New York (2021); Red Bull Arts, Detroit (2020); ASSEMBLY, Brooklyn (2019); Abrons Art Center, New York (2019); PioneerWorks, Brooklyn (2018); and Denniston Hill, Glen Wild (2018).

American Artist’s work is in the collections of Kadist Art Foundation; Marieluise Hessel Collection, CCS Bard, Annandale-on-Hudson; Museum of Modern Art, New York; University of Iowa Stanley Museum of Art; and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.