Repair Shop Collaborator: Ilana Harris-Babou

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Ilana Harris-Babou (b. 1991) was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. Her practice is interdisciplinary, spanning sculpture, installation, and video. She speaks the aspirational language of consumer culture and uses humor to digest painful realities. Her work mines the expectations of the American Dream; the ever-unreliable notion that hard work will lead to upward mobility and economic freedom. Her work explores the messy moments when individuals cannot fully conform to these systems—when their bodies feel unwieldy or are forced to rest, break down, or quit altogether. She investigates how these systems might be misused in generative ways.

She has had solo exhibitions throughout the US and Europe, including recent exhibitions Needy Machines at Candice Madey and Under My Feet at Storefront for Art and Architecture in New York. In May 2023, Harris-Babou’s work Liquid Gold took over the screens of TimesSquare for the Midnight Moment program. She has been included in the Istanbul Design Biennial (2020) and The Whitney Biennial (2019). Her work has been shown in group exhibitions at the Brooklyn Museum, the Queens Museum, and the Art Institute of Chicago, among others.