Ashton Phillips

Divine Portent procession September 14, 2025 Thank you to everyone who joined us to help us carry both the burden and the liberatory, regenerative potential of these Divine Portent joule bricks in collective action through the streets of Chinatown this month, from the place of their collective birth @automata_losangeles to the place of their first public exhibition @humanresourcesla . Born of damaged local earth, collectively sourced waste clay, and desiccated palm fibers, cast with millions of spores of pollution-consuming fungi, and the seeds of local pollution-extracting wildflowers and grasses, then stamped with “Divine Portent” in reference to @susan_stryker ’s earth-rumbling essay rallying trans people to reclaim the divinity of our monstrosity, these joule bricks embody the vibrancy, danger, and radical possibility of impurity and transmateriality. As objects, they perform the capacity of our own bodies to carry messages in languages of our own making, to resist silencing and oppression, and to build new foundations and structures out of feral materials we scavenge ourselves and summon into form together. @nickigreenstudio and I have been meditating on this work since Spring, pulling together Nicki’s concept memorial/monument for the Stonewall Riots, first exhibited @newmuseum in 2019 with @chrisevargas ’ @m_o_t_h_a , with my own Joule Project, an open series of site-specific joule blocks built with contaminated dirt, fungi, and seeds, and released into the world as units of potential energy and contaminating repair. Susan Stryker’s essay My Words to Victor Frankenstein from the Village above Chamonix helped situate this work both in defiance of the present anti-trans furor and within the deeper history of human cultures holding up the monster as a divine messenger sent to wake the world to great changes at hand. Over this time, many others showed up to help us care for, fortify, strengthen, educate, innoculate, and prepare these Divine Portent joule bricks for their lives in this broken world. Thank you to each of you who gave so much, so that they and we could be stronger- and louder - together. This is only a beginning. 📸 @argelrojo

PREY DRIVE is now live @ecoca_nhv through June 22nd. +++++ Prey Drive transforms the gallery into a multi-sensory site of contemplation, mourning, and trans-substantiation - part requiem for the hunted, part call for atonement in a time of mass betrayal. Using red hunting flood lights, a haptic soundscape of chewing, scratching, burning, and dripping, a site-specific installation of 527 ashen +’s, and a live colony of 20,000 plastic-metabolizing insects, Prey Drive imagines a world where everything is shifting and everyone is a potential target. Here, the languages of law and science, legibility and control, give way to a language of smoke and ash. Ashes to Ashes. Dust to dust. Frass to Frass. And you are invited to the pyre. +++++ Thank you to everyone who came out and spent time with this work and all of its depths and resonances yesterday. Special thanks to @hkelyasin of @somethingprojectsct for all of his care and nurturing helping to bring this exhibition into being. Thanks, too, to his curatorial partner @sshutan believing in the work and doing so much to give it space to live and breath. Gallery Director Aimee Burg of @ecoca_nhv also worked so hard into the night to help me realize the full depth and breadth of this vision. Thank you, Aimee, for all of the solidarity, trust, and sweat equity. This show would also have been impossible without emergency support from the Foundation for Contemporary arts. Thank you @foundationforcontemporaryarts for your support and belief in the urgency of this work. I will be back on June 18th for an artist talk and hope to share this work with more of you in the flesh then. Or come on your own in the meantime. If you would like to meet up with one of the curators during your visit, reach out and let me know. I’m happy to facilitate guided tours from near or far. 🖤➕🪲

I am incredibly honored to share the publication of my essay “Subverting the Cisgaze, Queering the Human/Nonhuman Divide, and Building Interspecies Refuges for Plastic Bodies in Womb/Tomb/BooM” in the Queering Nature issue of the Antennae Journal of Nature and Visual Culture. Thinking and feeling with a multisensory Womb/Tomb/BooM of plastic bodies - insect, polystyrene, and human, this essay theorizes, critiques, and examines ways of subverting the “cishuman” gaze, including its fixation on legibility, moral and material purity, and its desire for complete and “resolved” works/bodies/objects. Can art embrace a poetics of opacity and illegibility, focusing on the pleasure, discomfort, and generative power of darkness and perpetual metamorphosis, instead? Can we frustrate the power dynamics of pity and objectification by inviting “viewers” into environments that confront them with the impurity, vulnerability, and plasticity (or transness) of their own bodies? I’m so grateful to Antennae and Editor @dr.aloi for believing in this work and taking so much care with this essay and issue. Link in bio or download free at .uk - Repost from @dr.aloi • I’m so very proud to announce the publication of Antennae’s second issue dedicated to Queer Ecologies and art titled ‘Queering Nature’. Queer Ecology embraces the biological fluidity and uncontainable exuberance of more-than-human worlds to craft new thinking modalities, plateaus, and blueprints through which to reconfigure inherited normative notions and map new epistemological territories. An incredibly rich issue featuring contributions by @elena_antoniolli    @roseline.armange @sharononarnold sagebrice @m.chades @laurenlevatocoyne @essentialscreative @inklink    @salvador_jimenez_flores  ́ @treesaremygods @tovekjellmark    @wildnwayward @elsa.munoz.art @nikki_katty    @ashtonsphillips     @tranniery @jatunrisba @nikita.sazonov_ @nathaliaterra_ @adamodaveiga Cover image: Ashton S. Phillips, Womb/Tomb/BooM - A Refuge for Plastic Bodies, installation detail, mealworms in larval, pupae, and beetle forms, partially consumed styrofoam, mealworm frass and sheds, offertory flowers, and found feather, 2021

Join bio-artist @ashtonsphillips and his metamorphosing (post)plastic collaborators for Plant Sale @moca MOCA Geffen this Saturday from 11-4pm. Stop by to meet the plastic-metabolizing creatures and collect their limited edition, nitrogen and phosphorus-rich, post-plastic frass. ✨🪱🪱🪱✨ A limited supply of mycelium-reinforced, egg, and frass coated superbloom seed pupae will also be available - all cast from live-sculpted white-lined sphinx moth pupae. (Swipe for a little video of one of these live models just after their emergence). ⛈️🌼🐛🍄✨🌱

A couple weeks ago, participants gathered at International Bird Rescue for a hands-on workshop exploring the realities facing marine life. After learning about the impacts of human activity, they reviewed former patients’ radiographs showing plastic entanglement, ingested fishing hooks, and embedded BBs. That experience became the starting point for creation, as participants produced cyanotype prints using found materials gathered from Cabrillo Beach and Bird Rescue. The workshop is part of an 11-week series of free, community-centered sessions led by artist @ashtonsphillips , with support from the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs. Through Deep Attunement, hosted at Bird Rescue, participants are invited to connect more closely with the coastal environment and the wildlife in care. Classes take place on Friday afternoons and will continue until June 30. Stay tuned for upcoming events and RSVP on Ashton’s website: /deep-attunement #socal #environmentalart #cyanotype #pollution

Hot off the presses: Dysphoric Aesthetics: Toward Trans Ethics of Spectatorial Sensitivity by @lexmorglan . I have been in conversation with Lex for almost 3 years, through so much material curiosity, political heartbreak, beautiful resistance, and wonder. In a season when it has felt like so many forces are conspiring to silence me and others like me, it is a profound joy for my work to be a part of this careful and critical thinking, sensing, and feeling. Link in bio for full essay. — My article out now in Art Journal! Laying the theoretical foundation for my book project on what I call Dysphoric Aesthetics, this essay reclaims dysphoria for trans ethics and aesthetics through embodied encounters with current trans art practices—here, the generative work of @p___staff and @ashtonsphillips , to whom I am very grateful. So pleased to put this into the world. ✨ Open Access link in bio ✨

Today is Earth Day and I am alive. Despite the forces of shame and “common decency” that might prefer otherwise. Today, we are supposed to talk about how bad it is or how good it is or how there is hope or how hope is lost - but what I want to say is that you are also alive. On Earth. Despite all the efforts of so many who maybe also tried to kill you. And against all the odds that you might have already died. Or never been born. Or that this planet might never have formed here in this little pocket of swirling expansion. Just hot enough. Just cold enough. Empty and teaming. And this is truly a cause for celebration. Today, I will see the Earth in you and celebrate its skin and its clear bleary eyes. New and old. As many as there are eyes to see. Today I will see the Earth in me and celebrate its breath. Oxygenating this blood. Fueling electrical storms of muscle and fat on this bony, mineral architecture. Today, I will remember: I am an armature of survival. And so is Earth. And so are you.

Video from Scream Sesh at Poetic Research Bureau on Nov 17 2025. We’re doing our second performance TONIGHT (Tues) 𝖌𝖎𝖛𝖊 𝖒𝖊 𝖘𝖔𝖒𝖊𝖙𝖍𝖎𝖓𝖌 𝖙𝖔 𝖘𝖈𝖗𝖊𝖆𝖒 𝖆𝖇𝖔𝖚𝖙 at Metabolic Studio as part of “The Raised Voice” presented by @livingearth.la — dont miss it!! FREE - 7:30-9:30pm - link in @ninasarnelle bio We will be distributing the long awaited Scream Zine alongside readings on screaming by @misterroadshow @anaiwataki @imaginarymusic , as well as a film screening and discussion with @jheaneeeeeelle ⚡️ Video shot by Nina Sarnelle with sound mix by Jeremy Kennedy @table_blue Featuring @kourtneykyung @catmahatta @ashtonsphillips @_seako @kellylikescake (please tag anyone I missed!)

👂Tues April 14, 7:30pm at Metabolic Studio
1745 N Spring St (Chinatown/Lincoln Heights) *free parking & entrance on Baker Street* ADA accessible

 𝓣𝓱𝓮 𝓡𝓪𝓲𝓼𝓮𝓭 𝓥𝓸𝓲𝓬𝓮
 Nina Sarnelle: Breath Work (film)
 Ashton Phillips: Crucible (an interspecies (de)composition)
 A Quiet Scream: readings + performance
 Jheanelle Brown: guest respondent

 RSVP IN BIOOOOOO 🔈🔈

 Ashton Phillip’s Crucible (an interspecies (de)composition) is a sonic exploration of metamorphosis, plastic(ity), and interspecies (de)composition with live contributions from a colony of plastic-metabolising mealworm/beetles and the post-plastic ecosystem they make possible. 

 Nina Sarnelle’s Breath Work (film screening) is a 40-min experimental opera that explores breath as resistance. Part documentary, part performative ritual, it was created by a group of 13 local community members aged 11-65 in Long Beach, CA. Created in collaboration with @movelbforward , with support from @calartscouncil @artslb @awaw.award @nyfacurrent 

 “A Quiet Scream” is a short program of readings and performance on screaming, including a visual score by @catmahatta , and texts by @misterroadshow , @anaiwataki , @kourtneykyung & @imaginarymusic . Organized by the Scream Team, a collective research project focused on the queer/trans scream initiated by @saintspero . The Scream Team includes @table_blue , @_seako , @catmahatta , @harlequinknights , @pau_s_pescador , @ashtonsphillips , @ninasarnelle , @kourtneykyung , @huntrezz , @wesleighhhh & @kkmiracle Their first collective scream was hosted by @poeticresearch at @2220arts .

 Jheanelle Brown @jheaneeeeeelle is a film curator/programmer, educator, and arts administrator based in Los Angeles whose curatorial practice creates frameworks to explore the boundlessness of Black life in experimental and non-fiction film and video.

RSVP now to join us for this free 11-week creative workshop series led by artist-in-residence Ashton S. Phillips and hosted by the International Bird Rescue with support from the LA County Department of Cultural Affairs. This series emerges from the premise that we cannot help ourselves, our communities, or the larger ecosystems we inhabit, if we cannot first attune ourselves deeply to what is happening within and around us. Participants will be guided into a deeper attunement with the damaged, yet vibrant, coastal ecosystem that holds the Bird Rescue, its avian patients, and ourselves, through a series of site-specific, experimental, somatic, and material exercises. These exercises will take inspiration from a range of experimental practices - from Pauline Oliveros’ Deep Listening methods, to Paul Stamet’s community-driven regenerative agriculture, to indigenous walking-as-knowing pedagogies, to Anna Halprin’s participatory planetary movement scores, and Donna Haraway’s speculative interspecies storytelling as method for “staying with the trouble” of being alive in the late Anthropocene. Workshops will be held at the International Bird Rescue and surrounding sites where sick and injured marine birds are regularly recovered and released, including Cabrillo Beach. The series will culminate in a public presentation of creative work developed through this collective deep attunement on June 27, 2026. Space is limited. All materials provided. RSVP at link in bio or /deep-attunement.

Divine Portent Procession Chinatown, LA (@automata_losangeles to @humanresourcesla ) September 13, 2025 by Ashton Phillips (@ashtonsphillips ) & Nicki Green (@nickigreenstudio ) with contributions from: @badlylickedbear @sadiegreyduck @verohneek @lukafisher @leslie_muse @mathildasuniverse @alystair_rogers @delatorre_artstudio @ninasarnelle Text: Susan Stryker @susan_stryker Video: Nina Sarnelle PA: Henry Krusoe In September 2025, we opened a working Divine Portent Joule Brick factory inside Automata Arts. Collaborators, community members, and the passing by public were invited to come into the brick factory to commune with us, these living materials, and the process of metamorphosis, impurification, and regeneration happening inside. In darkness, we combined pollution-consuming fungal spores, wildflower seeds, feral plant fibers, wild clay, sand, and damaged local earth to animate this divinely monstrous trans* material: damaged and impure, but vibrant, and built with the seeds of its own regeneration and repair. We built brick molds from scrap 2 × 4’s and filled them with this living mud. Then, we pressed a “Divine Portent” stamp into the face of each one, so that every brick could carry its monstrosity, its holyness, and its foretelling of ominous change. We kept watch over these living bricks in the dark for 10 days as the seeds and pollution-consuming fungi inside them came to life and began threading these impure bodies together. When the bricks had grown strong, we put out a call: Come and help us carry the burden and promise of these bricks. Come help us bear the weight of their potential and grief. Come stand beside us as we pass through danger to lay a ground for a different future. More than 40 people showed up to help. We read to them from Susan Stryker’s “My Words for Victor Frankenstein from Above the Village Chamonix: Performing Transgender Rage”. Then, we lifted and carried these self-made objects of revolt and regeneration, covered in wildflowers, from the place of their birth to the place of their new beginning. Thank you for being a part of it and continuing to stand with us as we pass through this dark time together.

Thank you to all who came out and contributed your voices, ears, and bodies to the debut installation of Monsoon::Superbloom @angelsgateart last weekend. It was a dream to perform, hold, and amplify these voices - to summon this storm - with all of you. Special thanks to Nina Sarnelle @ninasarnelle Cat Mahatma @catmahatta Emji Saint Spero @homopathetic for animating this vivid poly-vocal downpour with me with all your tenderness, intimacy, intensity, and power, to Rosario Martinez Pogar, @house_of_chayo , for contributing her poetry, presence, resolve, and fluid rage and to the monsoon as both interviewee and poet to Emji and Rosario for becoming part of a collective voice reading my poetic monsoon prompt “on becoming a trans body of water” to kick off the event And to each and every person who contributed their voices and agencies to the sound installation: Badly Licked Bear (@badlylickedbear ) JD Shane Dixon (@leahshanedixon ) Umi Hsu (@wfumihsu ) Wesleigh Gates (@wesleighhhh ) Yvonne LeBien (@yvonnelebien ) Rosario Martínez Pogar (@house_of_chayo ) edua mercedes (@desembocaduraa ) Ash Morgan (@ashmorgancomedian ) O.K. Pau Pescador (@pau_s_pescador ) Yuri Preciado (@yuri_onlife ) Tanner Pfeiffer (@t_fife_ ) Emji Saint Spero (@homopathetic ) Albus Wang (@albusw ) Dorian Wood (@dorianwoodmusic ) With gratitude to @synchromymusic and @anujbhutanimusic for believing in the project and @artsunitedsp @dca_performingarts for the support. More to come May 30 and June 10th. Reach out if you would like to participate in the growing monsoon! Photo by @cookiecrumblejordan Video by @dylsmack coming soon.