UCR APPLICATION: ARTIST STATEMENT AND PORTFOLIO

ARTIST STATEMENT:
Panteha Abareshi's artistic practice is rooted in their existence as a chronically ill/disabled body contending with multiple medical illnesses, at the foundation of which is sickle cell zero beta thalassemia- a genetic blood disorder that causes debilitating pain and bodily deterioration, both of which increase with age.Their work explores the complexities of living within a body that is highly monitored, constantly examined, and made to feel like a specimen, critically interrogating the sick/disabled body’s place within medical institutions. Taking images that are recognizable as “human” forms, and reducing them to the gestural is a juxtaposition of Abareshi's own body's objectification, and dissection. Through performance work, they pushes their body to, and often beyond, the limits of its ability. In their video work and sculptural installations, Abareshi confronts the able-bodied gaze, and questions notions of consent within the dynamics of power, control and objectification between viewer and disabled body as subject. The radicalized abjectification of the normative corporeal form allows for a rigorous examination of the complexities and hierarchies within loss of ability, and its connection to a larger context of universal fragility fear, pain and mortality. Currently, Abareshi is focusing on the disabled body as fetish object, and conducting research into disabled sexuality, and its representations within pornography and fetish materials.

***This website serves as my artistic portfolio. for your consideration, I have uploaded unreleased documentation from my recently concluded exhibition at Human Resources Los Angeles entitled CAREROTICS: On Giving and Taking.

HONORABLE MENTION

Satin, paper, natural fibers, brass, ink.
2025

This piece fixates upon the manner in which tired repetitive condolence becomes an uncanny incantation of sorts. What is sympathy for the sick body? What is sympathy for the Cripple? Indeed sympathies take strange and maladapted forms as they are exercised by able bodied onlooker. The work features a large red award rosette ribbon printed with white text, which reads as a gentle “well wish”, then as desperate imploring and finally as agressive command - “get well soon!” “Get right!” As an order being barked. And what if this is all the care one is afforded? A flitting ribbon and a harrowed, platitudinal condolance delivered with sincere exasperation. The societal implication is oft that the sick body, the disabled body deserves nothing at all, no care and no sympathy- and so fraught “well wishes” should be recieved by the othered body like extravagant gift, not as stinging blow. The sick body is not afforded an autonomy in their care, just as with the disabled body - it’s handling is externalized and left in ableist authority. The commodification of caring leaves sympathy to be quantified by the size of a bouquet, or the extravagance of a gift. Uninscribed cards command the sick and the cripples to right themselves, so that they might stop making the able bodied audience to their suffering uncomfortable. Indeed, sympathy is performed and executed so often as a means to an end of emotional relief for the able bodies audience at great emotional cost to the othered subject of these sentiments.

HIGH PROTOCOL

Silicon, coband, elastic, cotton, foam, stainless steel

2025

THE WARD

Rubber, cotton fibers, stainless steel, polycarbonates, polyurethanes, fiberglass, glass, medical ephemera

2025

CARE AT COST

Electronic parts, cotton fibers, glass, stainless steel, cotton fibers, ink, polyester, cardboard, wiring

2025

The piece fixated on the notion of the disabled body as subject of constant and inescapable surveillance under the able-bodied gaze. This piece is to me a Sister piece to the ribbon work entitled 𝘏𝘰𝘯𝘰𝘳𝘢𝘣𝘭𝘦 𝘔𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯. Initially the two pieces were meant to be one, but I decided to separate them to give them each their own space to exist as independent works.

The commodification of "caring" leaves the quantification of sympathy to occur in direct correlation with the expenditure on the part of the able-bodied onlooker or “sympathizer." indeed the amount that someone “cares” is relayed through the size of a bouquet or the ornateness of a card, given without personal inscription- the printed "get well soon!" like gut-wrenching, and ominous command. Sympathy is a commodity, and this piece examines the notion of [not] being worth such expenditure as a sick body, as a cripple. The disabled body, the sick body, those other bodies which require care and externalized intervention to aid in their ability to exist- these bodies are patronized by the world we live in, and made to feel small and selfish for requiring their care. There is a wrongness and a shame in requiring care, medical or otherwise. And simultaneously the able-bodied individual is exalted and made out as quite noble for extending any sympathy, help or care to that being prescribed as pathetic, languid, useless and steadfastly watched as it grips for dear life to the low, cold rungs of the hierarchy of power.

The tags on the piece indicating that this bouquet is not only for sale- a sympathy to be purchased- but is also on markdown, a bargain buy for that able-bodied “sympathizer“, partaking in the capitalist bliss of a sale, and being able to valiantly (perform the act of) "care" while not spending the true and often high cost - whether that be an emotional cost, a physical cost or a monetary one. In return, the othered subject is commanded and expected to "get well!" As to alleviate the immense discomfort illness and disability provoke in the ablebodied, as futile as it may be.

ultimately, this work is a meditation on the notion of being cared for in a world which demarcates the sick and disabled as fundamentally undeserving of a corporeal autonomy, and lucky to recieve any semblance of "care." As with 𝘏𝘰𝘯𝘰𝘳𝘢𝘣𝘭𝘦 𝘔𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯, this work dwells upon the hard limits set upon what the sick and disabled body is afforded, legislatively, medically but also emotionally in the most quotidian of circumstances. The sick body, the disabled body- they are made into fetish object under the unrelenting ableist gaze - undone and unmade as human beings and left as dehumanized hyperobject of harrowing able-bodied fetishistic fascination. fetishistic currency is painstakingly drawn from the othered spectacle, leaving them drained, silenced and exploited by our ablelist society at large.

IN A VIOLENT PRONE

polyurethane, silicone, polycarbonate, butterfly needles, medical tubing, medical materials

2025

PATIENT PROCEEDINGS

C-stands, wax hands, heat lamps, pulse oximeters, butterfly needles, coband, additional medical ephemera

2025

PATIENCE

Polyurethane, polycarbonate, stainless steel, rubber, and silicone

2025

This piece, entitled 𝘗𝘈𝘛𝘐𝘌𝘕𝘊𝘌, is a work that took extensibe material experimentation in order to achieve what I had conceptualized. I envisioned something like what hangs in shops on the boardwalk- ridiculous souvenir t-shirts that reveal more about the wearers psyche than one might initially imagine. When I create work, my tongue is in my cheek more often than not. I created the "vintage" tshirt with the phrase "a body like this takes years to develop," taking the hokey phrase and contextualizing it around the sick, disabled body. Living with a degenerative and severe illness and resulting disability, it truly has taken many years for my body to deteriorate and become what it is today. There is a story I imagine here with this work- that body which longs to live and to be carefree, and yet finds itself inextricably tied to its own medicalization, an invisible, yet inseverable line that will always connect that body back to the hospital. The inescapable nature of being a patient.
This subject, perhaps in the midst of a wet tshirt competition, Is marked with Its medicalization. Two port-a-caths are accessed in its chest and leg, the tubing handing with a painstaking potentiality- as though at any moment it could be hooked back up to the iv machine and thrust back into its "rightful" place within the hospital sickbed.