CAMBRIDGE, MASS.- Wagner Foundation, a Cambridge, MA-based foundation committed to investing in health equity, economic wellbeing, and the transformative power of art and culture, announces Welcome to Cosmologyscape, by multidisciplinary artists Kite (Oglála Lakȟóta) and Alisha B Wormsley. Cosmologyscape is a community tool that empowers visitors and online participants to dream for different futures together, fusing new and old technologies through a uniquely critical and hopeful way. The artists were commissioned to transform their years-long interactive research into a site-specific installation that focuses on the participation of the Boston-area public. Anyone from the Boston-area can submit their dreams via the
Cosmologyscape website, which are transformed through a series of algorithms and technology tools into an animation on view at the gallery, alongside textiles, furniture, and sound artworks which have been generated through the artists' interpretation Lakȟóta philosophy, Afrofuturism, and Black quilting traditions. The resulting works, including textiles, digital animation, furniture, and sound will be on view at Wagner Gallery, February 26 - June 26, 2026.
Developed and inspired by the Cosmologyscape methodology, a framework for communal dreaming and the creation of tools that move across time, worlds, and possibilities, Welcome to Cosmologyscape is co-curated by Abigail Satinsky, Wagner Foundation Senior Program Officer & Curator, Art & Culture, and Maggie Wong, Wagner Gallery Coordinator.
“This iteration at Wagner Foundation has given us the opportunity to zoom out and express how our methodology for community dreaming is adaptable to the needs of Black and Indigenous communities. We have imagined our methods as interconnected worlds of ancestors and decision-making, expanding how we express those methods through experimental dream furniture, handmade textiles, and mural-sized graphics.” — Alisha B. Wormsley and Kite
Digital quilt squares generated by the Cosmologyscape dream portal using dreams submitted by individuals from the greater Boston area.
The name Cosmologyscape weaves together cosmos, the interconnectedness of all things, and landscape, the terrain we inhabit and observe. Cosmologyscape emerged from gatherings organized by the artists in 2020 with Black and Indigenous communities to dream and heal collectively. Rooted in honor and ancestral tradition, the project unfolds through participatory retreats and workshops that encourage reflection on individual and communal dream practices. Online, shared dreams are transplanted into digital quilt squares using symbolic systems informed by Lakȟóta philosophy, Afrofuturism, and Black quilting traditions. The resulting body of multidisciplinary artworks spanning textiles, digital animation, furniture, and sound, builds upon these symbolic systems employing computational methods to create spaces of rest and collective imagination.
“At Wagner Foundation, we work with artists who we believe can have a deep impact on the most pressing political and social concerns that affect our everyday lives, and we know that algorithms and machine learning both expand possibilities and create cause for concern,” states Abigail Satinsky, Wagner Foundation Senior Program Officer & Curator, Art & Culture. “Kite and Wormsley bring to bear the voice of community and ancestral perspectives on these technologies, creating a critical opening for dialogue that we’re eager to share with Boston.”
For Welcome to Cosmologyscape, Wormsley and Kite were invited to reflect on their methods of dreaming and making. This new body of work expands their research through a series of interconnected forms: a contextual diagram created with design studio Omnivore; furniture co-produced with Indigenous students from the University of Manitoba; and a “dream office” inviting visitors to rest, reflect, and enter the imaginative space of the project.
The project is grounded in ethical technological protocols that prioritize care for communities, land, water, air, and future generations. Free, prior, and informed consent is central to the artists’ data governance practices. Dreamers’ data is collected, securely managed, and intentionally destroyed, countering extractive data-harvesting practices. In return, participants receive restorative offerings, including herbal and tea recipes inspired by their dreams.
Continuing to evolve across digital and physical realms, Welcome to Cosmologyscape explores the power of dreamwork while acknowledging that the right to rest, dream, and share knowledge is shaped by race, class, place, and circumstance.
In partnership with the Wagner Gallery’s commitment to investing in artists’ visions, Kite and Wormsley are supported through a research grant by Wagner Foundation to work deeply within Boston-area communities to co-create a dream retreat and 2026 Summer Solstice public day of dreaming to envision a repeatable, rooted model for community-based dreamwork and technological collaboration. Cosmologyscape was first presented as a public art project by Creative Time in 2024, curated by Diya Vij with Arantza Orengo, Project Manager.
Kite (Oglála Lakȟóta) is an artist, composer, and scholar whose work merges Lakȟóta knowledge systems with performance, sound, sculpture, and computational media. She holds a PhD from Concordia University, Montréal. Kite is Director of the Wíhaŋble S’a Center for Indigenous AI, a National Endowment for the Humanities–designated Humanities Research Center at Bard College, where she is Distinguished Artist in Residence and Assistant Professor of American & Indigenous Studies. She is also Co-PI and Co-Director of the international Abundant Intelligences Research Program. Major projects include Cosmologyscape (Creative Time, 2022–24), Dreaming with AI (Institute of American Indian Arts Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, 2025), List Projects 31: Kite (MIT List Visual Arts Center, 2025), and Wičháȟpi Owihaŋke Waníča Kiŋ (Infinite Collapsing Star) (Bockley Gallery, 2025). Her work has been featured internationally at the Whitney Biennial, São Paulo Biennial, and the 14th Shanghai Biennale. Kite is an enrolled citizen of the Oglala Sioux Tribe and lives in Catskill, NY.
Alisha B Wormsley (Pittsburgh, PA) is an interdisciplinary artist and cultural producer whose work exists at the intersections of public art, film, craft and social practice. Her work transforms public space and collective imagination through projects rooted in liberated futures, ritual, and community care. She is the founder of Sibyls Shrine: a residency for Black artists who M/other, creator of There Are Black People in the Future, co creator of Cosmologyscape with artist Kite exploring the power of collective dreaming. Her newest film-in-process, Children of NAN: A Survival Guide—which presents tutorials and survival strategies for future Black femmes while exploring their relationship to ritual, craft, and the natural world— has been awarded the Anonymous Was A Woman/NYFA Award, a Pittsburgh Foundation grant, and the Sundance Interdisciplinary Grant. Wormsley is a 2022 Guggenheim Fellow and is an Assistant Professor of Art in Social Practice at Carnegie Mellon University.
