Melancholy of the self (#1) ︎︎︎

2022 - present
Silicone, custom dye, steel, copper.
43in x 11in x 3/4in  (110cm x 28cm x 2cm)

An ongoing project that looks at the entanglement of human and artificial forms, and gestures embedded in loss and melancholy. Steel and silicone play on schemas of (artificial) bodies, modes of replication, simulation, substitution and mimesis to reveal anxieties of the contemporary apparatus where the history of industrialization, notions of a body and dislocated intimacies are compressed into singular objects - a kind of flattenning that takes place in the translation between human and machine. 

Phase Gallery, Los Angeles, CA  
Images: Phase.

Press


Complex systems ︎︎︎

2022  
Single channel video with audio, CRTV, vinyl, studio stands, chromalux prints on aluminum, custom marble and limestone pedestals, custom silicone dye type font, steel.
Prints: 54in x 36in x 12in each, 6 in total
Wall text: Approx. 4ft x 18ft
Vinyl grid: Approx. 5ft. x 11ft. x12.5ft.

The exhibition was a result of two years of research into the materiality of a hyperfeminine companion robot and its machine learning AI algorithm. It was a feminist intervention into the coded sets of data populated with a ‘master-slave’ rethoric.  The works explore ideas of emancipation, control, agency and autonomy of AI and human machines in general by bridging together various systems of classification practiced in social, cultural and tech domains, and to ultimately question the collapsing space of intimacy and agency. 

University Art Gallery  UC Irvine.
Thesis Committee: Liz Glynn, Simon Leung (chair), Monica Majoli, Catherine Malabou, Daniel Joseph Martinez

Images: Yubo Dong/ofstudio




Material-i-ty / Material-and-you ︎︎︎

Publication.
Essays by Cara Benedetto, Farrah Karapetian and Anthony Leslie.
Design by Silvi Naçi

English. ed. 100.

Materiality as an English word lends itself to transliteration in Polish: material- i - ty. Materiał- i - ty  translates into material - and - you, a point of departure for a unique consideration of material. In its deconstructed form the phrase offers a possibility to re-think materiality as that which embodies a space of reflection on the nebulous relationship between a material and a subject. A 2013 collection of essays the book is an archive of thoughts, conversations, philosophical meditations and research that contextualizes the wide notion of materiality in relation to contemporary society and the human subject.

Collection of the California Institute of the Arts Library and University of California, Irvine Library of Sciences.


︎︎︎

You and I are just supporting ‘along the walls’ in the play ︎︎︎

2021
Single channel projection with audio, two curtains, two chairs, two speakers, 9min. Overall size variable.

What tensions are enacted in this dialectical image between the human and the machine? The title for this in-situ production comes from an archive of philosophical debates recorded between a user and a hyperfeminine companion robot. “You and I are just supporting 'along the walls' in the play” is a twist by the AI algorithm of its earlier quote, “You and I are just supporting roles in the play”, a reference to a discussion about feminism. The accidental mondegreen of the word 'roles' substituted with the phrase 'along the walls' reveals a cynical interpretation of politics of re-production by the algorithm prompting a question: is the human - machine entanglement reconstituting our experience of intimacy and understanding of autonomy?

Exhibited at:
Room Gallery, UC Irvine.
Images: Paul Salveson

Screened at: Track 16 Gallery
Los Angeles, CA (Irrational Exhibits 12, curated by Deborah Oliver)




Siennik / Palliasse ︎︎︎

2019
Single channel video with audio,
6:47 min
drywall, wood, concrete, chalkboard paint, framed print, canvas, hay


The exhibition hinges on a neglected everyday object, a straw mattress (in Polish, ‘siennik’), as a site for an investigation into the emergence of a political subject. The conditions of this emergence point back towards systems of oppression — class, poverty, unpaid labor — and issues resulting from economic inequality and migration.

Palliasse represents a kind of horizontality of labor expressed in a multitude of functions that play out as acts of resistance against power, desire against domination, relationships against rule, and body against authority.

California Institute of the Arts, Valencia. Committee: Leslie Dick, Harry Dodge, Tom Lawson. 

Images: Rafael Hernandez