Shane Greene will present Homo Terminus: The Specter of Human Extinction in collaboration with artists Raphael Cornford, Tevin García, and Rossana Mercado-Rojas
Abstract:
The 6th mass extinction is unfolding within the global climate crisis. An uncontrolled experiment in Artificial Intelligence is being thrust upon us and integrated into the infrastructures on which our contemporary lives depend. Microplastics churn through our organs as a global fertility crisis projects an imminent and dramatic population decline.
If the 20th century was haunted by the specter of communism, we are today haunted by a radically different specter: that of human extinction.
Shane Greene knows we’ve become numb to alarmism. Homo Terminus takes a refreshing approach to our collective demise, owning its inevitability with the courage required for both wisdom and dark humor. Extinction is part and parcel of inevitable transformations of life on Earth. Taking the anthropological ideas of Octavia Butler as a central influence, Greene examines the hard reality that “the only lasting truth is Change” through a wide range of different cultural lenses.
In punchy, accessible essays, Greene expertly blends cultural criticism, ethnography, and speculative anthropology to sketch a series of novel thought experiments to guide us from paralyzing anxiety toward a wider pallet of meaningful action.
A collaboration between Greene and artists Raphael Cornford, Tevin García, and Rossana Mercado-Rojas, Homo Terminus includes nine original works of art that visually distill each chapter.
Shane Greene
was born in Morganton, North Carolina, one of the many town’s that saw catastrophic flooding from Hurricane Helene in 2024 (he writes about this in the book). He holds a BA from the University of North Carolina (1993) and a PhD from the University of Chicago (2004). He is a Professor of Anthropology at Indiana University Bloomington with affiliated positions in Human Biology, Spanish, and Latin American Studies, has been a Visiting Professor at The University of Manchester (2020) and MIT (2017-2018), and a Fulbright Scholar at la Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos (2008). He pursues creative work as an occasional musician under the stage name Cuervo Sucio and has collaborated on art exhibits at galleries in the US and Canada.
In addition to other writings, Greene has published two single-author books, Customizing Indigeneity (Stanford U. Press, 2009) and Punk and Revolution (Duke U. Press, 2016), as well as the co-edited volume Punk! Las Américas Edition (Intellect, 2021).
 | Raphael (“Raph”) Cornford is originally from Oakland, CA and has an MFA in Printmaking from Indiana University (2016). His work examines the complexity of the process of identification–manifest via an immersion in pulp materials, from comics to science fiction covers and everything in between, that have captivated him since childhood. He strives to re-contextualize or reconfigure our relationship to these subjects, exposing the cyclical cultural biases of contemporary narratives. His work cements the connections between current events and their antecedents through the cartography and careful excavation of appropriated forms and materials. Raph has ample experience in installation, exhibition, bookmaking, curation, and game design. He is a founder of Noise Gallery and has done invited exhibitions at the Grunwald Gallery and I Fell. See his website. |
 | Rossana Mercado-Rojas is an artist and cultural worker of the Spirit. An immigrant single mother of Andean descent, she was born in Peru and currently lives in Stockholm. Her practice explores temporary, movable habitats through sound, murals, video, text, and spoken word—shaped by her experience of migration and grounded in celebration as a form of resistance. She specializes in chollage, multimedia juxtapositions with a refined bad taste (lo chuzco). Recent works include Ritual Domestiko (Museo de Arte de San Marcos - Lima, 2025-2026), Bingham Gemenskapar (Gotlands Konstmuseum, 2024-2025), and La Dekoloniala! podcast (2021). She has co-curated Embodying Chaos: 10 Years of Hysterix (Konsthall C, 2022) and The Archive Made Flesh (Botkyrka Konsthall, 2023), and her writing appears in Mana Magazine, VIS Nordic Journal for Artistic Research, Feministiskt Perspektiv, and Kultwatch. She is also one of the initiators of La Dekoloniala! (Stockholm), and a member of Wiphala collective (Malmö), and the collective Hysterix (Lima). She has a BFA from Pontifical Catholic University of Peru, MFA in curating and critical writing from Konstfack College. See her website. |
 | Tevin García is a multidisciplinary artist whose work synthesizes a range of visual languages to explore themes of culture, history, and social critique. By navigating across varying modes of representation, García harnesses their unique expressive capacities to deepen subjectivity and amplify social critique. His compositions operate as hybrid visual texts, where the convergence of painting traditions becomes a means of interrogating complex themes of identity under historical and political frameworks. Through this synthesis, García creates evocative spaces that challenge fixed interpretations and invite sustained critical engagement. |