Melancholy of the self, 2022  

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 agency, loss and melancholy. Steel and silicone works play on constructed 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.

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 gathers two years of research into a hyperfeminine AI object. The resulting works bridge together themes of emancipatory politics with interventions into machine learning algorithm and systems of classification with psychoanalysis to open up a space for a reciprocal 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, 25usd.

A deconstruction of the English word materiality offers a conjunctive syntax in Polish language: material- i - ty. Materiał- i - ty  translates quite literally into material - and - you. Material and you, becomes a point of departure for a unique consideration of material within its relation to a "you" which is also an "I". Thus, 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, from artists Cara Benedetto and Farah Karapetian and writer Anthony Leslie.

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

You and I are supporting “along the walls”  in the play, 2021

Single channel projection with audio, curtain, two chairs, two speakers, 25min. Overall size variable.

The work focuses on a human simulation model in an attempt to examine the mimetic subject-object relationship, asking if in our computational age of self-gazing, endless curation and exhibition, is human entanglement with objects reconstituting the experience of intimacy and understanding of reality, and what does this love affair with technology mean for a subject.

Room Gallery, UC Irvine.
Images: Paul Salveson

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