i build new worlds for you (2023-2025)

April 12, 2025 - May 10, 2025
Philadelphia Smallworks Gallery
Philadelphia, PA

“I Build New Worlds for You” is a conceptual narrative and body of 34 mixed media works by Matthews-Alvarado, grounded in AfroFuturism which seeks to recenter portraits of sharecroppers and rememorialize these past ancestors and land stewards in newly imagined spaces of liberation, abundance, care, and rest. Throughout much of the collection, Matthews-Alvarado utilizes and reconstitutes images from historical archives on Southern sharecropping in the early 20th century to honor and commemorate those farmers in flourishing spaces of safety and security in nature-- creating new portals of possibility and celebrating the beauty of mundanity.

Additionally, “I Build New Worlds for You” is a group show featuring 7 Philadelphia artists, whose works enter into the conversation started by Matthews-Alvarado. Each artist engages in radical imagination and world-building through their art, and offers their own response to and interperation of what AfroFuturism means to them.