04/30/2026
Alien v. Alienation, by Jupiter Goodridge on view in Emergence: Graduating Seniors Exhibition through Commencement day on May 2nd.
“I've never truly belonged. I process the world as if I crash-landed here without instructions. I watch others the way an alien studies a new species, trying to decode their emotions and behaviors, transmitting on a frequency I can't tune into. Others feel like a mycelial network, a vast fungal system that transmits information with electrical pulses beneath the surface, while I remain above the soil.
Books on myth and space became a sanctuary, distant planets and strange ecosystems | could breathe in. Eventually, I realized / was the anomaly. That's when the mask began, rehearsing expressions— a careful imitation of belonging, able to pass as a native to this world. The disguise eventually decayed. As I got older, it became harder to maintain. I began to understand my gender as nonconforming. I was diagnosed with ASD—the strange signals I'd always sensed finally had names. The otherness remains, but it feels less like failure and more like difference. Not part of the network, but still alive in the same strange terrain.
These experiences shape this series, jewelry imagined as artifacts worn by extraterrestrial beings moving through galaxies beyond human comprehension. Rather than pieces representing rigid technology, they represent the electrical pulses of mycelial structures. Being alienated made me feel misplaced, now the alien lets me belong to myself.”
