Ilana Harris-Babou (b. 1991, Brooklyn) is an interdisciplinary artist working across sculpture, video, and installation. Scrutinizing interior design trends and smart devices, Harris-Babou locates an inherent tension between the sleek refinement of Instagram-worthy spaces and the messy realities of our bodies.
The artist’s recent wall reliefs juxtapose sumptuously glazed tile with handmade representations of fingerprints and the ubiquitous ‘swipe’ gesture used to operate digital touchscreens. Tactile, bulbous, and slightly unsettling, they consider the myriad ways that touch structures our daily interactions and the multiple meanings — connection, recoilment, intimacy, infection — it has accrued.
Smaller wall reliefs inspired by bathroom design trends hone in on the industry’s core paradox: the desire for a frictionless, clean, and glamorous space in an environment designed to accommodate the smudged, unruly realities of our corporeal needs. This paradox is further explored in the artist’s recent video works. Presented on custom displays resembling medicine cabinets, Harris-Babou co-opted the technology of smart workout mirrors to layer the viewer’s reflection with videos of foamy substances that recall oozing, dripping expectorate or expelled breastmilk.
Harris-Babou’s work serves as a potent reminder that the aspiration for a frictionless, streamlined life necessarily represses the intimate, shared and fascinating humanness of day-to-day existence. These complications of desire and repression are apparent in the artist’s tabletop installations. Displayed on occasional tables, the artist’s ceramic sculptures are based on Kong toys — a type of dog toy built to conceal a treat — whose swollen shape alludes to modernist forms. Glazed primarily with fleshy tones and variously whole, torn, and deflated, they are corporeal containers built to conceal our desires.
Living between Brooklyn and Connecticut, where she is Assistant Professor of Art at Wesleyan University, Harris-Babou's work has been exhibited throughout the US and Europe. Recent exhibitions include Golden Thread at Crisp-Ellert Art Museum (Saint Augustine, FL) and Under My Feet at Storefront for Art and Architecture in New York. In May 2023, Harris Babou's video installation Liquid Gold took over the screens of Times Square for the Midnight Moment program.
Upcoming exhibitions include the Brooklyn Artists Exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum of Art (Oct 2024) and a solo exhibition at Dreamsong. Harris-Babou has been included in the Istanbul Design Biennial (2020) and The Whitney Biennial (2019). Her work is represented in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, Wellcome Collection (London), and Electronic Arts Intermix, among others. Her exhibitions have been reviewed in the New Yorker, the New York Times, Artforum, e-flux, Sculpture Magazine, and Art in America, among others.
