Few art shows begin with spa music. You can imagine my confusion when I knocked on the door of the Candice Madey gallery, in New York, and heard celestial stomach growls coming from inside. Was this the right floor? The right building, even? Yes and yes, but, in my defense, galleries and spas have more in common than the proprietors of either would like to admit. Both aspire to semispiritual experiences, packaged in clean, well-lit spaces with a barely repressed grossness. Both may be regular old businesses, once your eyes adjust to the glow.
The clean, the gross, the spiritual, and the mercantile: these are the key ingredients for Ilana Harris-Babou, the thirty-two-year-old artist whose work awaits you at "Needy Machines," behind the gallery door. Mix them together and you get a sugary confection known as "wellness," which happens to be her subject.
At this show, you will find, in addition to the spa soundtrack, ceramic pill bottles, a mirror that flashes laboratory invoices, and rectangles of shiny white tile enlivened by colorful fruit. In the past, Harris-Babou's videos and sculptures have announced their themes with yoni eggs, rose-quartz face rollers, and the like. There's less of this kind of signposting in the new show, and a few of the best pieces have none at all, as though she were weaning us off the whats of her subject and moving on to the whys.
Harris-Babou was born in Brooklyn, to a mother raised mainly in New York and Connecticut and a father who emigrated from Senegal. She received her M.F.A. from Columbia in 2016; three years later, her art appeared in the Whitney Biennial, and a year after that she made a splash, or at least a respectable spritz, with a show at Hesse Flatow.
This story is from the December 04, 2023 edition of The New Yorker.
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This story is from the December 04, 2023 edition of The New Yorker.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
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ANTIHERO
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HOW THE WEST WAS LONG
“Horizon: An American Saga—Chapter 1.”
WHEEL OF FORTUNE
Taffy Brodesser-Akner weighs the cost of generational wealth.
TWICE-TOLD TALES
The seditious writers who unravel their own stories.
CASTING A LINE
The hard-bitten genius of Norman Maclean.
TEARDROPS ON MY GUITAR
Four years ago, when Ivan Cornejo was a junior in high school, he had a meeting with his family to announce that he was dropping out. His parents were alarmed, of course, but his older sister, Pamela, had a more sympathetic reaction, because she also happened to be his manager, and she knew that he wasn’t bluffing when he said that he had to focus on his career.
THE HADAL ZONE
Arwen Rasmont waits hours at Keflavík International for his flight; they call it as he leaves the men’s room. He walks past the mirrored wall and is assaulted, as usual, by his dead father’s handsome image: high-arched nose, yellow hair.
OPENING THEORY
Ivan is standing on his own in the corner while the men from the chess club move the chairs and tables around.
THE LAST RAVE
Remembering a summer of estrangement.
КАНО
I’ve dated all kinds of women in my life,” the man said, “but I have to say I’ve never seen one as ugly as you.”