Capital Formation
Performance and video collaboration with Ayesha Singh
2017-2018

Capital Formation is a performance and video collaboration with artist Ayesha Singh. The project contains both a video work and performance. The performance invites audience members to don inflatable suits in the shape of classical columns. The artist and audience members then participate in an exercise routine that broaches cultural appropriation and capitalist subjects. The challenges of movement in the suits emphasizes the challenges of social progress under capitalism.

Ayesha Singh's video presents an exploration of memory and familiarity with built form, questioning the seduction of ornamentation and its appropriation as an architectural strategy. The works were exhibited together during the New Blood Performance Art Festival (Links Hall, Chicago), and during the exhibition and performance series ‘Capital Formation' (2018, Comfort Station, Chicago).

The Capital Formation exhibit and performance series was curated by Cat Bluemke and featured artists whose work negotiated relationships under capitalism through a diversity of performative practices. The exhibit was part of the Force and Motion performance series at Comfort Station, Chicago. The featured artists included Ayesha Singh, Marcela Torres, Maire Witt O'Neill, Misael Soto, Ben McCarthy, Cale Weir, and Jonathan Carroll.

Images are taken from the performance of Capital Formation in Collaboration with Ayesha Singh for the 2017 New Blood Performance Art Festival (Links Hall, Chicago), and the project's exhibit at the 2018 School of the Art Institute of Chicago's Design Show.