Unearthed Artifacts: Post-Cyberpunk Relics from a Forgotten Future presents a series of ceramic works that sit at the intersection of speculative archaeology and cyberpunk futurism. Vancouver-based artist Wilson Makgawinata forms these bulbous, pressure-like vessels through a hybrid process of wheel throwing and handbuilding, pushing clay beyond its familiar functions. Small modular components such as screws, plugs, and spherical nodes are slip-cast and integrated as functional-looking attachments, creating a visual language of connectors, ports, and interfaces.

The resulting artifacts evoke reactor cores, containment modules, and fragments of obsolete machinery: devices whose original functions have long since vanished. Glazed in black mirror finishes and accented with matte cobalt fittings and neon wiring, the works oscillate between glossy precision and organic irregularity. Each piece feels simultaneously preserved and decayed, technological yet strangely bodily.

By presenting these objects as archaeological finds, sometimes sealed, packaged, or arranged like scientific specimens. Wilson Makgawinata challenges assumptions of ceramics as a purely functional or traditional medium. Instead, the pieces operate as remnants of a lost civilization, prompting viewers to consider what material traces our own hyper-consumer era might leave behind.

These relics do not provide clear narratives. Rather, they invite the audience to imagine the worlds that might have created them, and to question how future archaeologists might interpret the artifacts of our present.

MEDIUM

stoneware ceramics, acrylic, neon rope

ARTIST BIO

Wilson Makgawinata is a Vancouver-based multidisciplinary artist working primarily with ceramics. His work explores speculative archaeology and post-cyberpunk aesthetics. Working through both wheel throwing and handbuilding, he creates sculptural ceramic artifacts that resemble relics from an imagined future—objects shaped by pressure, adaptation, and technological obsolescence. His practice blends industrial references with organic forms, often incorporating experimental glazes and mixed materials to suggest systems that are no longer functional but still charged with meaning. By presenting ceramics as artifacts rather than vessels, his work invites reflection on memory, technology, and what traces our present might leave behind.