If You Build It
(’Til Kingdom Come)
If You Build It (‘Til Kingdom Come) uses baseball as a lens to examine parallels between sports and religion, particularly how both institutions mobilize hope to expand influence and generate capital while often reinforcing gendered identities. At the same time, they create spaces for community, ritual, and personal expression, blurring the boundaries of what constitutes a “religious” space. Set within a gymnasium-turned-gallery, the installation features large-scale sculptures—including porcelain bleachers, an animated scoreboard, championship-style banners, and a clay home plate—that explore tensions between utility and reverence, fragility and strength, and competition and collective longing. Through material contrasts and symbolic forms, the exhibition reflects on what is lost when public gathering spaces disappear and questions the personal and societal impact of participating in—or standing apart from—the spectacle of such institutions.
Full exhibition images:
Arizona State University
Phoenix, Arizona
Truman State Univerity
Kirksville, Missouri