Worn Out Joy
2024 - ongoing
This body of work examines how contemporary capitalism manages a shared condition of exhaustion—the accumulation of stress, alienation, and mental fatigue—by offering calibrated forms of relief that leave its underlying causes intact. Approaching exhaustion as a collective and structurally produced condition, I trace how it surfaces within everyday gestures and moments, and how it is softened and normalized within the spaces we inhabit and move through in our daily lives.
Central to the project are what I describe as “apparatuses of relief”: infrastructural features and elements embedded in public and semi-public spaces that are designed to regulate affect and soothe nerves. Operating beneath the surface, these elements promise momentary relief yet remain pervasively integrated within the urban environments that generate the pressures we perpetually attempt to escape.