Anna Tsouhlarakis

In physics, exotic matter is matter that somehow deviates from normal matter and has “exotic” properties. It has been discovered that exotic matter is a necessary component of wormholes, or hypothetical connections between space-time.

Within the history of the United States, Native people have been a signifier of exoticism and otherness for centuries. Exotic Matter is an investigation of the overlap between Western ideologies of time and space, and those found in Native American communities and traditions across the United States, both historically and presently. The advent of technosocial wormholes adds to the layering as Native Americans have become one of the greatest users of social media based on population percentage, thus creating additional forms of cultural reservoirs. The combination of voice and power collapse time and space to create new ideas and evolutions of being and living as a Native person. Black holes, wormholes, and the theory of relativity serve as jumping off points to reimagine the hierarchies and definitions of knowledge and research and to revise the understanding of Native ways of thinking and being.