Mayer has spent over a decade examining the possibilities and probabilities of the future, and our ongoing relationship with technology—the way we might physically integrate with it, its potential to liberate the self from utilitarian concerns. Her investigations have revealed that the future, though, never quite arrives; as technology outpaces itself, revolutionary tools becoming artifacts overnight and new advancements threaten to deplete our resources, the need for adaptation continues. Perhaps the future is better understood as an ever-present container for the imagination. In >PLACEHOLDER FUTURE<, Mayer does not “attempt to predict the future,” she writes, “so much as construct an environment for living inside our attempts to imagine it.” Mayer is fascinated by how we continually challenge and acclimatize to our rapidly changing conditions. In her short video “How to Disappear” (2026), she employs the familiar language of social media to provide a humorous how-to on obliterating your digital existence, inspired by her research on prepper culture and survivalism. The materials we interact with the most—glass and aluminum, the building blocks of our cell phones—are transformed into objects both sculptural and utilitarian, and playfully innovative regardless. A sheet of lined notebook paper is made entirely of fused glass (“Transparent Paper,” 2026); a chunky silver chair, constructed with aluminum (“Silla,” 2024), evokes a vision of a home in the outer reaches of space.

 

And of course it does: Mayer obtained many of the show’s materials from a satellite company forced to downsize due to technological advancements, particularly the growing use of Starlink. Mayer, who is Cuban-American, finds inspiration in Cuba’s Special Period, “when scarcity required people to repair, alter, cannibalize, and reinvent existing technologies,” she says, It’s optimistic to imagine that the future, as it looks from here—collapsing infrastructure, depleted resources, widespread scarcity, AI-induced outages—might, Mayer writes, “contribute to a creative renaissance built around repair, adaptation, reuse, and technological disobedience. Or perhaps the opposite happens. Will bans or outages of resources contribute to our creative renaissance or turn us further into well-kept pets with our own processing skills headed more quickly to atrophy than the human life span on its natural timeline?” If the works here—made of repurposed materials that might’ve once orbited the moon—offer any insight, there is hope for our ingenuity.

 

Jillian Mayer is an artist and filmmaker. Through, videos, sculptures, online experiences, photography, performances, and installations, Mayer explores how technology affects our lives, bodies, and identities by processing how our physical world and bodies are impacted and reshaped by our participation in a digital landscape. Mayer investigates the points of tension between our online and physical worlds and makes work that attempts to inhabit the increasingly porous boundary between the two. Mayer’s artwork has a consistent thread of modeling how to subvert capital-driven modes of technological innovation. Solo exhibitions include Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Omaha, Nebraska (2019), Kunst Aarhus, Aarhus, Denmark (2019), Tufts University, Boston, MA (2018); Pérez Art Museum, Miami, FL (2016); and LAXART, Los Angeles, CA (2016). She has exhibited, screened films, and performed at MoMA PS1 (2017); MoMA (2013); the Bass Museum of Art, North Miami, FL (2012); the Guggenheim Museum (2010); and the Musée d’Art Contemporain de Montréal, Québec as a part of the Montréal Biennial (2014). Mayer is a recipient of the Creative Capital Fellowship, South Florida Cultural Consortium Visual/Media Artists Fellowship, Cintas Foundation Fellowship for Cuban Artists, and was named one of the “25 New Faces of Independent Film” by Filmmaker magazine. ​ She has lectured at The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, CalArts, the Sundance Institute, ICA Miami, Carnegie Mellon University and more. Mayer’s films have screened at festivals including Sundance, SXSW, Rottenberg Film Fest, and the New York Film Festival. Mayer is represented by David Castillo in Miami, FL