PsyClone Calafia (2023), commissioned by the San Francisco Arts Commission for a 25 x 8 feet curved screen, features a griffin toppling European colonial monarchs and conquistadors of the Americas. The griffin belongs to Queen Calafia, a fictional character from Garci Rodriguez de Montalvo’s 16th century novel The Adventures of Esplendián, and after whom California was named. The animation’s second scene occurs in a desert landscape, referencing war technologies and weaponry fielded in Californian deserts, and offering a speculative future of human enhancement and global warming effects.
