Bed as Studio: Deconstructing “Hard Work”

When does the art-making start and stop? What do we consider “the work”? Which ways of working are valued? How are notions of hard work and morality entangled and what worlds can we dream with an ethics of care?

Join artist and MAD Artist Studios resident Alex Dolores Salerno for a slumber party where they will discuss the historical context of these questions and their present-day implications. Alex will present the legacy of artwork made from the bed as well as their own creative practice that incorporates bedding materials. All participants will then be invited to join the conversation.

We encourage participants to get cozy and join from their bed or any comfortable space. Please feel free to reach out to education@madmuseum.org with any access needs. ASL interpretation and closed captions will be provided and all images will be visually described.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Alex Dolores Salerno works to critique standards of productivity, notions of normative embodiment, and the commodification of rest. Their interdisciplinary practice embodies a multiplicity of support structures, and the accumulation of used medical ephemera and bedding collected from their own life and community. Drawing from the bed as a site of collectivity and protest, they argue that to celebrate diverse bodyminds requires an embrace of our interdependencies and a reconfiguration of value and time away from capitalist frameworks. Salerno has exhibited at The Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation’s 8th Floor Gallery, the Ford Foundation Gallery, and Franklin Street Works, and has participated in Art Beyond Sight’s Art & Disability Residency Program. They earned their MFA from Parsons School of Design and their BS from Skidmore College.