Archive of Digital Portraits Cast in Concrete

On view at THE BLANC gallery from October 26th, 2022 through November 15th, 2022, the queer and anxious artist Blair Simmons will unveil her solo exhibition Archive of Digital Portraits Cast in Concrete. The exhibition will present 11 concrete sculptural portraits of the cached web histories and digital identities of the artist’s friends and family.

The exhibited sculptures are made of discarded technologies derived from the people in the artist’s life. These sculptures are cast in concrete and then exposed by hammering and chiseling. Through the process of art-making, the artist aims to revisit the daily pain of working and labor that emerged from her research-driven pedagogy process: warping, distorting, grinding, and wearing down. She examines her relationships with technology as both dependent and critical.

She also tries to visualize the tension generated by the severe anxiety disorder, of chronic pain, and migraines that she experiences in the body. This collection of works examines her conflicting feelings toward technology, as both see it as an exit and an origin of her pain.

Artist

Blair Simmons is a queer and anxious artist, researcher, storyteller, and technician working with multiple mediums. She is currently teaching at the Interactive Media Arts and Interactive Telecommunications Program at New York University. Her interest in creation resides in logic, language, structures, pain, patterns, maps, math, arrows, analysis, arches, queerness, bodies, failure, uselessness, organics, and opposites. Her research materializes as objects and performances which have been performed at the likes of Pioneer Works, La Mama’s CultureHub, Wordhack at Babycastles, and the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Press releases and reports of her are published in PARtake, The Scotsman, USA Today, The Guardian, etc.