If / Then

If / Then is a solo exhibition of mixed media works at the Paula Cooper Gallery New York, then touring to the Sharjah Art Museum, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates.

This project comprises three elements. Firstly, a series of photographic documentation of staged performances by that explore notions of progress, autonomy and ‘techniques of the self’. The performances are designed to find a middle route between the ritualistic and the absurd involving interaction with found objects and sites in the context of the hyper-accelerated modernization occurring in Dubai.

Secondly, a video work that extends the artist’s interest in training procedures, documenting a creative intervention into the world of telephone coaching, that, in its turn refers, compositionally, to representations of St. Jerome and, conceptually, to Foucauldian notions of power.

Thirdly, a telephone-based work that continues the artist’s exploration of corporate spaces as potential sites of performance, critically reflecting on consumer culture and individual autonomy and exploring the possibility of the virtual space opened up by the telephone constituting a form of institutional portrait.