Invisible Labor 

Raphael Arar + Renee Couture

October 1 - October 30, 2022

Exhibition Reception

Saturday, October 1 5-8 pm

Open Hours

Sat-Sun 12-5pm*
drop in or by appointment 

Email Info@carnationcontemporary.com
to schedule a visit

*Masks required inside the gallery

Exhibition Statement

Through playful, satirical sculpture and bold graphics, Arar makes a mockery of the capitalist imperative to commodify everything and create profit at all costs. His work questions the ideological underpinnings and contradictions of late capitalism and sketches an idea of alternative futures. Meanwhile, using photographs as more than a memory device and motherhood as a jumping-off point, Couture turns the camera onto herself. She attempts to make visible representations of the emotional work and emotional cocktail of motherhood.

Together their work references the invisible and hidden labor that props up the economy and continues to alienate us from that which makes us human. 

Bios

Raphael Arar works at the nexus of complex systems, transdisciplinary design, and arts-based research. His work highlights the social, political, and economic implications of technological acceleration and human-to-machine interaction. His artwork has been shown at museums, conferences, festivals, and galleries internationally including the ZKM | Center for Art and Media, Moscow Museum of Applied Art, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, International Symposium on Electronic Art (ISEA), ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Gamble House Museum, Science Gallery, Boston Cyberarts Gallery, and Athens Video Art Festival. Notable commissions include Noema Magazine, Goethe Institut, Gray Area Foundation for the Arts, Intel Labs, and IBM Research. Commercially, his design work has been featured in publications including TED, Forbes, Inc. Magazine, FastCompany, Wired, and others.

Renee Couture
Exploring a range of topics from place to motherhood to wanderlust, Renee Couture has a diverse practice, encompassing sculpture, photography, and drawing. She is the recipient of an Individual Artist Fellowship and three Career Opportunity Grants from the Oregon Arts Commission, and four Project Grants from the Douglas County Cultural Coalition. Couture has been granted residencies at Ucross Foundation, Djerassi, Jentel, PLAYA, Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, Pine Meadow Ranch, and Vermont Studio Center. Currently, Couture lives on seven acres in rural southern Oregon with her husband, toddler daughter, and two dogs. She works out of a retrofitted 20-foot camper-turned studio space located in her garden.