The World Is On Fire
Introduction
As our digital sphere has become increasingly surveilled and polarized, physical spaces are even more vital to connection and expression. In The World Is on Fire, 2025 Dorner Prize winner Kailyn Bryant (BFA 2025, Furniture Design) depicts five queer people of color at a dinner party. A prompt on the painting reads: “What’s something you wish you could say out loud?” Visitors are invited to paste their thoughts directly on the painting, gradually covering its surface with thoughts, hopes, or affirmations. This work, on view in the Chace Lobby, amplifies the voices of queer individuals and people of color, whose histories remain underrepresented in museum contexts.
The Dorner Prize is an annual juried competition that invites RISD student artists and designers to create new installations, performances, programs, or digital encounters that engage the public by using the RISD Museum’s object collections, public spaces, and digital platforms. The Dorner Prize, named for the distinguished early 20th-century RISD Museum director Alexander Dorner, is made possible by a generous anonymous gift.
2025 Dorner Prize Jurors: Gabrielle Walker (Nancy Elizabeth Prophet Curatorial Assistant, RISD Museum) and Naimah Zulmadelle Pétigny (Shiller Family Assistant Professor of Race in Art and Design, Department of Literary Arts and Studies, RISD).
