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Aria Dean

Los Angeles, US, 1993

Aria Dean lives and works in New York. Recent solo and two-person exhibitions and performances include the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London (2024); The Power Plant, Toronto (2023); The Renaissance Society, Chicago (2023); Greene Naftali, New York (2023, 2021); Progetto, Lecce, Italy (2023); CAPC, Bordeaux (2023); REDCAT, Los Angeles (2021); Artists Space, New York (2020); Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève, Geneva (2019); and the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York (2018). Significant group shows include the Whitney Biennial: Quiet As It’s Kept (2022); the Hammer Museum’s biennial Made in L.A. 2020: a version (2021); the Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia (2019); The MAC, Belfast, Northern Ireland (2019); Tai Kwun, Hong Kong (2019); Schinkel Pavillon, Berlin (2018); Swiss Institute, New York (2018); and the de Young Museum, San Francisco (2017), among others.

Her writing has appeared in publications including Artforum, Art in America, e-flux, The New Inquiry, X-TRA Contemporary Art Quarterly, Spike Quarterly, Kaleidoscope Magazine, Texte zur Kunst, CURA Magazine, and November. A volume of her collected writings, Bad Infinity, was published by Sternberg Press in 2023. Dean’s work is in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the De Pont Museum of Contemporary Art, Tilburg, Netherlands; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Hessel Museum of Art, Annandale-on- Hudson, New York; The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

Abattoir, U.S.A.!, 2023

Single-channel video, sound, colour, 10 min. 50 sec., 2023. Courtesy of the artist and Greene Naftali, New York.

The film is an Unreal Engine walkthrough of an empty slaughterhouse set to an original score. Unreal Engine is a 3D computer graphics tool used to create real-time environments for a wide range of platforms The title Abattoir, U.S.A!, references the two initial sources of inspiration for the work, French philosopher Georges Bataille and Black American theorist Frank Wilderson, joining or blurring the two contexts.