Gloves from Panteha Abareshi's exhibition at Human Resources

LOS ANGELES —  Human Resources Los Angeles (HRLA) presents CAREOTICS: on giving and taking, a solo exhibition by Panteha Abareshi that examines how the disabled body is relegated to the fringes of visibility and yet made into a spectacle, bringing a complex duality to the nature of disability as performance. For Abareshi, the absence of autonomy makes room for fetishism to blossom, as the disabled individual is made into a tool for the able-bodied viewer to use as linguistic metaphor and/or as sexualized fetish object. In their work, the disabled body becomes a vessel for the taboo corporeal fears and desires of the able-bodied audience. 

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. 

CAREOTICS: on giving and taking is curated by Jennifer Doyle, Caroline Ellen Liou, and Jeanne Vaccaro. Major support for the exhibition is provided by the Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts and the English Department at the University of California, Riverside. We are also grateful to Miguel Barragan and his students at ASU Herberger Institute for Design & the Arts, and to Alpha Medical Resources.