Sky, Surface, Seas, Submerge, Sunken
Alta Berri
Stable Diffusion, Photoshop, oil on wood
18x48 inches
2020, 2022

Sky, Surface, Seas, Submerge, Sunken is the latest installment in the artist’s Mochila series – an intergalactic nomadic adventure – where the titular character searches for an ancient life sustaining artifact desperately needed on their home planet. This dystopian landscape is one of many within Mochila’s travels.

New York-based artist Alta Berri deftly collects images from distinct sources and composites them into dystopian scenes of Mochila's world. Since the early 2000s, Berri has continually played with the concept of belonging and now world-building with works that are at times political, humorous, and poetic. Through her art–which dynamically explores themes of representation, cultural dichotomies, yearning, and loneliness–Berri presents an encounter with universal themes, questioning and revisiting their meanings while creating new narratives in the process.