Betye Saar at
Roberts Projects

Betye Saar, Mojotech (1987) (installation view). Roberts Projects, Los Angeles, 2024. Image courtesy of the artist and Roberts Projects. Photo: Paul Salveson.

At Roberts Projects, visitors leave offerings—a small Buddha, an origami dollar bill, an unopened bandaid—at the base of Mojotech (1987), an otherworldly altarpiece by Betye Saar. Recalling the form of a Catholic polyptych, the seven-panel installation forms an abstracted landscape constructed from fragmented mirrors, broken circuitry, obsolete technologies, and other materials that echo the use-what-you-can ethos of both the Great Depression era in which Saar was raised and post-apocalyptic science fiction worlds. Created during a residency at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Mojotech reflects the cybernetic and techno-utopian optimism of the 1980s, when human-machine integration was envisioned as a solution to humanity’s challenges and computers were revered as almost divine. Saar captures this idealism by transforming discarded technology into an object of reverence. Yet, in stripping these materials from their original machines, she renders them iconic, inviting us to think through the ever-unfolding relationship between technology and faith. 

Mojotech evokes an elemental panorama upon which the artist’s techno-gods emerge. Rich greens anchor the base of the panels, transitioning to blue above, suggesting earth and sky. A burst of orange-red at the center recalls fire, grounding the work in primal elements and human ingenuity. Wires shoot from the wall above the assemblage like stars, while toy snakes, lizards, and ambiguous creatures populate the panels, blurring the boundaries between the organic and mechanical. A central trio of stacked rectangles rises to evoke a godhead, embodying the salvific potential some attribute to technology. 

Mirror fragments embedded in the altarpiece invite viewers to insert themselves into the work, prompting reflection on how it resonates in the present. In the 1980s, cybernetics promised a more collectivist, utopian world; but as such computing technologies have become increasingly privatized, with tech companies increasingly focused on exploiting rather than fostering our desire for connection, Mojotech stands less as an altarpiece and more as a memorial to an unrealized vision of technological deliverance. Mojotech endures, nearly four decades after its creation, as both a relic and a mirror, its layered reflections absorbing the shifting tides of technology, faith, illusionment and disillusionment.

Betye Saar: Mojotech runs from September 14–February 28, 2025 at Roberts Projects (442 S. La Brea Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90036).

Isabella Miller lives and works in Los Angeles.

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