The Unworld to Come. Imagining an Otherwise…

A long white gallery with a pale concrete floor runs toward a single banner hanging in the distance. At left, a vast sheet of red, blue, green and black fabric slumps against the wall and spills across the floor, stamped with words in bright blue and pinned with pages of text; at right, a tall white banner holds a hand-drawn map of fine lines, circles and a blue-orange star, labeled in Arabic and English: property, non-property, Waqf, rift, clay.
On a deep green wall a projected film glows sky blue and rust over a blurred heap of rubble. Along a gray wall, five tall white banners hang in a row, each crossed by drifting lines like contours or tide marks, with phrases in Arabic and English: "The land shall only be passed on for worship," "The land shall be transformed into a social Waqf or a Mashaa," "The land shall not be inherited." An empty slatted wooden bench waits on the concrete floor.
Title
The Unworld to Come. Imagining an Otherwise…
Artist/Creator
Marwa Arsanios, Ashley Hunt, Natascha Sadr Haghighian, virgil b/g taylor
Description
A group exhibition at UC Irvine's University Art Galleries that treats climate change as an interlocking crisis bound up with economic and social justice, from extraction presented as green transition to the forced migration, detention and deportation of people displaced by rising seas and neo-colonial regimes. Curated by Juli Carson, Annika Haas and Sasha Ussef, it drew on Jack Halberstam's idea of 'unworlding' and Bernard Stiegler's notion of the neganthropocene to ask how a livable life might be imagined within present conditions of collapse. Works by Marwa Arsanios, Ashley Hunt, Natascha Sadr Haghighian and virgil b/g taylor were installed in the Contemporary Arts Center Gallery, accompanied by an opening reception and a day-long workshop, 'Collapse as a Condition of (Un)Knowing.' The show launched the first phase of The Neganthropocene, a three-part research project led by Carson under the UC Climate Action Arts Network.
Event Type
Exhibition
Date
January 24 – April 4, 2026
Location
Contemporary Arts Center Gallery, 712 Arts Plaza, Irvine, California
Organizer
Juli Carson, Annika Haas, Sasha Ussef
Geographic Scope
International / Global
Climate & Ecology Themes
Climate Justice
Migration and Displacement
Extraction and Mining
Discipline / Field
Arts & Design
Concepts
Speculative Futures and Imagination
Colonialism and Decolonization
Audience / Engagement Type
Public / General Audience
Academic / Research
Methods & Approaches
Public Programming
Rights
Rights held by artist or creator
Website
uag.arts.uci.edu
Contributor
Richard Kahwagi, Si Six Scies Studios (exhibition graphics)
Publisher
UC Irvine, University Art Galleries, Claire Trevor School of the Arts
Item sets
California Art & Climate Archive
UC Irvine
Media
A long white gallery with a pale concrete floor runs toward a single banner hanging in the distance. At left, a vast sheet of red, blue, green and black fabric slumps against the wall and spills across the floor, stamped with words in bright blue and pinned with pages of text; at right, a tall white banner holds a hand-drawn map of fine lines, circles and a blue-orange star, labeled in Arabic and English: property, non-property, Waqf, rift, clay.Marwa Arsanios, Ashley Hunt, Natascha Sadr Haghighian, virgil b/g taylor, The Unworld to Come 1
On a deep green wall a projected film glows sky blue and rust over a blurred heap of rubble. Along a gray wall, five tall white banners hang in a row, each crossed by drifting lines like contours or tide marks, with phrases in Arabic and English: "The land shall only be passed on for worship," "The land shall be transformed into a social Waqf or a Mashaa," "The land shall not be inherited." An empty slatted wooden bench waits on the concrete floor.Ashley Hunt and Marwa Arsanios, The Unworld to Come 2