Park McArthur, VALS

Part Of Pratt Fine Arts Visiting Artist Lecture Series ( VALS) 

New York-based artist Park McArthur works primarily in sculpture, sound and text. In addition to her use of readymade industrial objects, McArthur is interested in objects that result from, what she describes as, “the work necessary for life,” work that is also known as reproductive labor or living labor. Objects of this nature featured in previous sculptures and installations include, the artist’s own pajamas, worn and altered by processes of care and sleep, as well as twenty temporary access ramps, made or purchased at McArthur’s request in order to enter and exit buildings by wheelchair. Less interested in the body as a sovereign unit than in the fleshiness of bodies that deny such a unit, McArthur asks what materiality has to do with flesh and what flesh has to do with absorption, and absorption’s sibling, expulsion.

Under the guidance and instruction of disability McArthur experiments with personal and social meanings of debility, delay and dependency by making artwork across different media and formats. With Constantina Zavitsanos McArthur has published texts and exhibited collaborative work. In 2016 McArthur co-organized with Jennifer Burris a survey of Beverly Buchanan’s artistic practice that traveled from The Brooklyn Museum to The Spelman College Museum of Fine Art. McArthur has presented exhibitions at Kunsthalle Bern, MoMA, SFMOMA, and Chisenhale Gallery and in 2019 joined The Department of Art & Design at Rutgers University as Tepper Family Endowed Chair.