Kailyn Bryant                                                                                                            As of late   Archive   Sketches   Info



        









        







Kailyn Bryant, The World Is on Fire, 2025. Courtesy of the RISD Museum






Winner of the 2025 Dorner Prize, "The World Is on Fire" was an interactive installation that invited viewers to reflect on intimacy, community, and the act of preservation. Positioned across from the Chace Center lobby front desk, the centerpiece is a twelve by eight foot painting depicting five queer people of color at a dinner party. Plates of food, glasses half empty, and candle light fill the room. Four guests are engrossed in conversation, while a woman at the head of the table breaks the fourth wall, gazing directly at the viewer. Through a window, the outside world is on fire. A prompt on the painting reads: “What’s something you wish you could say out loud?” Pillars on either side of the painting provide note cards and writing utensils, inviting participants to respond and paste their notes directly onto the painting.

Dining together is a universal experience that fosters connection. Norman Rockwell’s Freedom from Want, 1943, and Carrie Mae Weems’s Kitchen Table Series, 1990, both explore the question of real and metaphorical nourishment. In recent times, our digital sphere has become increasingly surveilled and polarized, cementing how vital physical media and experience is for connection and expression. As a queer woman of color, I know the fear of retribution for simply existing. "The World Is on Fire" underscores the urgency of protecting shared histories and fostering community in a time of division. 

This project called on the RISD Museum to fulfill its role as both a preserver of cultural histories and a space for public dialogue. The Chace Center lobby, with its high visibility, was the ideal space to transform these contributions into a living archive shaped by the Museum’s visitors. As responses on the painting accumulate, I hoped that people would open up to each other and spark vulnerable conversations of hope and resilience.