Art Metropole / Aliya Pabani “Bleacher“

Events > Exhibition

16 Jul. - 17 Aug. 2016

Aliya Pabani "Bleacher"

Artist: Aliya Pabani

CLOSING EVENT: Wednesday August 17, 5-7PM
Join us at Art Metropole to meet the artist and enjoy a root beer float.

A bleacher is a standardized structure composed of tiered, raised seating. The design derives from early amphitheatres, which produced a “citizen as spectator” for the public restaging of historical battles and expositions of skill; decontextualized elements that were pivotal to the expansion of empire. In its contemporary manifestation, the liminal object divides a facade of sanctioned, organized, and often mass public spectatorship, and an incidental space—”behind the bleachers”—for the unsanctioned, illicit, and marginal. In the window display space of Art Met, the bleacher acts as an extension of a wooden bench (from Tom Dean’s 2013 exhibition, Mercy) which currently serves as a public seating area during the store’s opening hours.

Aliya Pabani is a multidisciplinary artist, working primarily in video, performance, and installation-based practices. Her work attempts to materialize the social contours of public systems and infrastructures, drawing from methods in ethnography, product design, and social experiment. She received a bachelor’s degree in English Literature from McGill University (2007), and a diploma from the Centre for Experimental Media Art at Srishti School of Art Design and Technology in Bangalore (2010). She has attended Khoj Artist’s Association’s Public.Art.Ecology residency in Delhi, and an exchange residency at the Institute of Advanced Media Arts and Science in Ogaki, Japan. Recent performances include Wildlife at Summerworks (Toronto), and Doored at Double Double Land (Toronto) and Los Angeles Contemporary Archive.

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