Aria Dean: Abattoir

“Aria Dean: Abattoir,” is Aria Dean’s first exhibition in the UK. The presentation includes two artworks related to the artist’s investigation of the foundational relationship between death and modernity on conceptual and material levels.

The immersive installation with 8-channel sound traverses the interior of an empty slaughterhouse. The film was rendered using the 3D computer graphics tool, Unreal Engine, mimicked in the ICA’s gallery through physical echoes of the virtual space and accompayned Evan Zierk’s compositions. In the US context, the way an industrialised slaughterhouse establishes and perpetuates a particular relationship between human, animal, and machine resonated with the structrualised violence against Black Americans.

The secondary gallery contains “Vitrine*,” an installation of four large vitrines and an accompanying wall text by the artist. The vitrines are empty save for a single word marked on their red velvet lining with a branding iron. The brand, a tag of ownership usually burned into living flesh, emphasises the palpable lack of a body. As with the film installation, the implication of violence is through the structural elements at hand.

Conceptual roots of the exhibition trace back to French philosopher Georges Bataille‘s ideas about the role of slaughterhouses in delineating ‘civil society.’ By situating this theme in the heart of establishment at the ICA, Dean challenges societal boundaries and confronts systemic violence.