paola jalili

While office spaces might not be thought of as places where ceremonies are held, they are full of everyday ritual-like gestures. Repetition, redundancy, re-production, reiteration: performing the same tasks over and over. This repetitive aspect of work resonates too in the arts and cultural field: artistic production, but especially all its accompanying labor—such as administration and finance management, grant writing, self-curating, marketing and promotion—often feels like an endless loop of doing the same thing again and again, without enough time to stop, rest, reflect, or perfect.

Over the past seven years I have been collecting office supplies, stationary, and printed matter for the Office Aesthetics project. From vintage to new finds, most of the items in this collection are secondhand and found by myself or others, who have kindly gifted them to me. The artworks presented in this exhibition were made using almost exclusively materials from this collection. They aim to embody the ritualistic aspect of work, and to draw connections between office, artistic, and other forms of contemporary labor.