Touch Detectionby Ilana Harris-Babou

Dreamsong is pleased to present Touch Detection, the gallery’s first solo exhibition with Ilana Harris-Babou (b. 1991, Brooklyn NY), an interdisciplinary artist working across sculpture, video, and installation. Exploring the gulf between our corporeal realities and the aspirational lifestyles marketed to us by the wellness industry and the home décor market among other sectors, Touch Detection inserts pathos and humor into objects otherwise intended to facilitate a seamless and streamlined existence. Customizing mirrored video screens, smart light fixtures, occasional tables and tesserae, Harris Babou transforms these signifiers of modern refinement with ceramic objects and moving images to cultivate tactile reflections on 21st century life.

Ilana Harris-Babou’s work has been exhibited throughout the US and Europe. Recent exhibitions include Needy Machines at Candice Madey 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. She has been included in the Istanbul Design Biennial (2020) and The Whitney Biennial (2019). Harris-Babou’s work is represented in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, Wellcome Collection (London), and Electronic Arts Intermix. Her exhibitions have been reviewed in the New Yorker, the New York Times, Artforum, e-flux, Sculpture Magazine, and Art in America, among others.