Kitchen 2623 C.E.
The Middle Period of Climate Engineering

A domestic computer generates an anthropomorphic hologram for the baking of a pie. While technologies for the synthesis complete finished meals had long since been available, the tradition of in-home cooking and baking was maintained as a cultural activity. The art and entertainment value of food - preparation was made all the more accessible due to new developments in instantaneous ingredient replication, making fresh produce immediately available at all times of year.

This painting was created for Essenhigh’s most recent solo exhibition, Uchronia, at Kavi Gupta gallery in Chicago, which presented a vision of a hypothetical future in which humanity has resolved its troubled relationship with the ecosphere. The goal was not to present a complete picture of this idealized future, Essenhigh says, “but rather fragments where we have to wonder how much is symbolic, how much is abstracted, or how much is literal.”

“This Uchronia may have problems,” Essenhigh explains. “I’m not posing these pictures as definitive answers. I’m posing them as possibilities—a way to begin the conversation about what we want our future to look like.”