Evidence of Us
E Tyler Burton
On view May 9 – September 6, 2026
Evidence of Us examines the material record humanity is creating in real time. Through sculpture, projection, textile installation, cyanotypes, and participatory elements, the exhibition invites visitors to consider what future archaeologists might uncover about our era—an age defined by plastic, consumption, and accumulation.
The works function as contemporary fossils, preserving fragments of daily life and revealing the layered impact of individual and collective actions. Visitors are invited to reflect on the evidence we are leaving behind and the future that evidence will shape.
About the Artist
E Tyler Burton’s work grows from a sustained interest in the natural world and the ways humans shape, use, and alter it. She works with materials that hold evidence—plastic designed for convenience yet built to last, trees altered by fire, and landscapes reshaped by water diversion—approaching them not as metaphors, but as records.
Across multiple bodies of work, Burton explores the tension between permanence and impermanence, destruction and care. In Fossils of the Future, everyday plastics are embedded within concrete strata, imagining them as artifacts from a civilization defined by consumption. Artifacts of a Fire draws from Western wildfire sites, pairing charred wood with metal to navigate vulnerability and resilience. Places: California Water considers landscapes shaped by extraction and mismanagement, including the Salton Sea and Owens Lake, where ambition and consequence converge.
Through scale, material presence, and surface, Burton’s work encourages close looking. It does not offer solutions—it offers evidence, asking us to consider what we are building, what we are losing, and what will remain.
About the Exhibition
Across the exhibition, familiar materials—clothing, bottle caps, packaging, and water bottles—are recontextualized as artifacts. A projected fossil slice distorts in response to human movement, suggesting how our presence alters the systems we inhabit. A dome constructed from discarded clothing surrounds viewers in the afterlife of fast fashion. Cyanotype “blueprints” of plastic objects line the walls like scientific records, while a growing column of plastic caps becomes a visible measure of accumulation over time.
Together, the works position viewers not as observers of history, but as participants within it.
Opening Reception
Opening Reception:
May 9, 2026, 3:00-6:00pm
Open to the public. General admission applies. Free for Museum Members.