Hannah Perry at Arsenal Contemporary New York

A couple of months ago, the Arsenal Foundation for Contemporary Art opened its third gallery on Bowery street in New York, only minutes away from the New Museum. The Canadian foundation inaugurated its new space with The Finiliar by Ed Fornieles and, since May 3rd, is showcasing the latest show of British artist Hannah Perry, Viruses Worth Spreading.  

Cry Daggers, 2017 - Photograph Courtesy of Arsenal Contemporary

The exhibition offers a polysensory experience by merging sculpture, sound and video in an installation inhabiting the whole gallery. As could be expected when reading the show's title, Perry's pieces provoke a certain kind of anxiety. Both the images and sentences included in her work can seem familiar therefore evoking disturbing recollections.  

The exhibition carries us inside a parallel world where virtual and real life are completely linked; where representation means as much as life itself. Perry's work investigates the performance and dissemination of the private and the intimate by considering events and narratives taking equal places in both the virtual and the real world. 

Installation view, Viruses Worth Spreading, 2017 - Photograph Courtesy of Arsenal Contemporary

Through sensitively constructed pieces, Viruses Worth Spreading leaves us with an astounding feeling of disincarnated nostalgia. The exhibition exposes the fear of losing control of our identities in an overwhelmingly imaged society. Hannah Perry simultaneously helps us ponder about the prevalent state of anxiety caused by the duplication of the self in our society and provokes us by questioning if we really are the protagonists of our own narratives.  

Viruses Worth Spreading
Hannah Perry
Now open at Arsenal Contemporary New York
Until July 2, 2017