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In assembling his recent project, “Wayward North,” Kambui Olujimi spent a lot of time gazing up at the stars. The artist’s solo exhibition at Art in Generals temporary space in Dumbo includes 24 hand-stitched quilts depicting the positions of the stars plotted over the course of a year. Each month is represented by two different quilts, one showing the skies from the Northern Hemisphere, one from the Southern. Rhinestones glued onto the quilts plot the accurate positions of the stars in 2007, the year Olujimi started his project. But he has reimagined the constellations — painstakingly stitched in silver thread on a satiny fabric — which are patterned according to an epic personal mythology that includes a variety of mythic creatures commingling with urban relics and objects from the natural world. This quizzical mythology takes cues from Western astronomy, non-Western, indigenous cultures, and science fiction alike.

A written narrative passed out as leaflets to gallery visitors accompanies the quilts, each month’s constellation revealing a new chapter of a phantasmagoric tale. Trying to find clues to this cryptic story in the constellations proves challenging, however. One could either wait to read the extended narrative in a book written by Olujimi, to be published by Art in General in September, or treat the stitched images in each quilt as an open score from which to tease out one’s own tale. The artist urges doing the latter, especially since he himself has read the night sky as an open score from which to glean his own mythology. Composing an alternate interpretation of celestial phenomena in contrast to Western astronomy and astrology allows one to celebrate both the impermanence of its inscription on the night sky and its possibilities as a dynamic platform.

Such impermanence suggests that everything in Olujimi’s cosmos is in flux, and shape-shifting appears as a common motif within the written narrative. Just as the positions of the stars appear to change as the Earth rotates around the sun, they lend form to new visions and constellations that then redirect the dreamlike text. A woman’s long braids morph into the majestic tail of a great blue whale. The tongue of a hippopotamus turns into a two-headed snake. A refrigerator sprouts flamingo legs and goes for a sprint. Other appliances bare sharp fangs. Entities hybridize with manufactured objects; a reminder that our artificial and natural worlds are becoming more and more enmeshed. Consider, for example, the fact that we often confuse satellites for stars in the glittering night sky; they’re thus camouflaged to blend almost seamlessly into our vision of the natural world.

A selection of handmade objects derived from the narrative accompanies the quilts, displayed like tangible relics from an imaginary world. The Chinese kites that make an appearance in the written text and the stitched constellations also hang in the gallery as three-dimensional objects, their strings tied together and anchored down by a solitary, conical birthday hat. It’s seems paradoxical to use an object that’s symbolically festive, hence uplifting, as an anchor weight, but twists of metaphor and upended meanings are common in Olujimi’s universe. Other skillfully crafted objects, including photographs, drawings, prints, and sculptures, fill the cavernous space of the gallery, standing as a testament to Olujimi’s versatility as well as his dexterity with a variety of media. The most stunning objects, aside from the quilts, are a series of photographs of “mourners.” (Hint: there’s no happy ending to this story.) Only the mourners’ tear-soaked eyes are visible in these images, their facial features gradually coming into view as tears cascade down and seemingly wash away the blankness of the page.

There was a time when history was imagined by looking up and reading the heavens. Now some interpret the positions of the stars in those same heavens to foretell the future. “Wayward North” is an artist’s attempt to reinscribe the mythological narratives that have birthed our religions and shaped our various spiritual beliefs, so as to recognize an expanded field of possibilities and imagine the present anew.