Photo: Panteha Abareshi
Join in on Panteha Aberashi in online conversation Between Bondage and Bandage with Emily Watlington Monday 17 April at 8 pm (CEST)!
Join via zoom here!
The conversation will revolve around Panteha Abareshi's latest exhibition INVALID PLEASURES at Kunsthall Trondheim.
In the exhibition artist Panteha Abareshi explores sexuality and sensuality in the context of disability, and how the disabled body, and mind, are regarded, including as fetish objects.
The exhibition's title, INVALID PLEASURES, is an extended play on the word “invalid”. While the term "invalid" refers to being worthless or illegitimate, it is also an outdated name for a disabled person. "Invalid" can also mean that something is forbidden, which, in combination with the word "pleasure", implies a kind of sensual taboo or fetish.
In their newly commissioned works presented in the exhibition, Panteha Abareshi investigates the disabled body as an object of fetishism and its representation in pornography and fetish materials. Collectively, the works question the able-bodied gaze as well as ideas of consent within power dynamics, not limited to the objectification found between the onlooker and the disabled body.
During the conversation international viewers will get a chance to review several works from the exhibition including the video work AN EXCERCISE IN LOGIC (IF YOU PUT THE BODIES IN THE FIRE) (2023).
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Panteha Abareshi (born 1999, Montreal, Quebec, Canada) lives and works in Los Angeles, California, USA. Solo exhibitions include “This Is Not A Body” at Hunter Shaw Fine Arts, Los Angeles (2022) and “Tender Calamities” at Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, Los Angeles (2021). Selected group exhibitions include MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt (2022), Kunsthaus Zürich (2022), 1969 Gallery, New York (2022) and Shape Arts, London (2020). The artist has been featured in publications such as New York Times and the Los Angeles Times.
Emily Watlington is associate editor of Art in America. Her criticism often focuses on video and media art through the lenses of gender and disability studies. A Fulbright scholar with a master’s degree from MIT in the history, theory, and criticism of architecture and art, she has held curatorial positions at the MIT List Visual Arts Center and MassArt’s Bakalar and Paine Galleries (now the MassArt Art Museum).