flesh machines

rebecca forstater, morgan green, danni o’brien

September 20 - November 23, 2023

Please join us in the Allegheny Art Galleries for an artist panel discussion and reception to celebrate the opening of Flesh Machines on Tuesday, September 19. Panel 5:30 - 6:30; reception 6:30 - 8:00. Refreshments and small bites will be served. This event is free and open to the public.

About the exhibition: Artists Rebecca Forstater, Morgan Green, and Danni O’Brien foreground the entangled relations between bodies and technology.  Works in Flesh Machines evoke the ways in which language, gender, and desire are produced and circulated within a cultural landscape that no longer distinguishes between physical and digital spheres. Through playful re-imaginings, Forstater’s work reveals the troubling commodification of gendered trauma, space, and experience as digital entertainment and fetish. With hand-crafted machines, programs, and drawings, Green considers the capacity of technology to both convey and produce language that is inherently queer. The aesthetics of Green’s work hints at the surprisingly long history of complex machine and human relations.  O’Brien’s sculptures and drawings gesture toward bodies of unknown, multiplicitous identities—human, plant, machine—which proffer playful possibilities that explode established categories of gender and species. All three artists engage with technology to undermine its mainstream aspirations toward transparency, efficiency, and productivity. Flesh Machines celebrates low-fi, glitchy, and unwieldy forms that operate against the grain of tech culture as a means of both critique and joyous resistance.

Flesh Machines is curated by Paula Burleigh and Jack Honeysett

about the artists

Rebecca Forstater (she/they) is a South Carolina-based interdisciplinary artist whose work considers the production of current histories in digital landscapes. Forstater received her MFA from Syracuse University and her BFA from James Madison University. Their work has been exhibited internationally and nationally with most recent shows at The Hangaram Design Museum (Seoul), Future Fair x PARADICE PALASE (NYC), Tiger Strikes Asteroid (Los Angeles), Unrequited Leisure (Nashville), Bunker Projects (Pittsburg), Governors Island (New York), Das Giftraum (Berlin). They have lectured internationally and have taught undergraduate and graduate courses at Syracuse University and Binghamton University. Currently, Forstater is an Assistant Professor of Studio Art at Wofford College and the Co-Chair of Grants, Scholarships, and Finance at the New Media Caucus.

Morgan Green (they/she) uses computer programming to deal with language. Recent linguistics proposes language as a mental organ, a biological entity. In their practice, Green pushes this idea into the realm of science fiction—a narrative where language is both a vital structure and a parasite. Language helps you survive and even sparks pleasure, but it also fosters violence. Green uses computers to expose rather than regulate words: their wildness and power. Green’s work has been collected by public institutions including the Special Collections at Amherst College and the Riverside Public Library. She works as an Assistant Professor of Computer and Information Science at Allegheny College in Meadville, PA.

Danni O’Brien (she/they) is an interdisciplinary artist based in Baltimore, Maryland. Her studio practice is rooted in environmentalism, nostalgia, and owned queerness. O’Brien has exhibited work at venues including the Museum of Contemporary Art Arlington, Asya Geisberg Gallery, Tephra Institute for Contemporary Art, Pazo Fine Art, and the Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art, among others. She has been a visiting artist at the University of Arizona, Towson University, Dickinson College, and Wofford College. She has been awarded residencies with PLOP, The Wassaic Project, Proyecto Ace, Art Farm, Baltimore Clayworks, Red Lodge Clay Center, Azule, and the Maple Terrace. They are the recipient of a 2022 Individual Artist Grant from the Belle Foundation for Cultural Development. O’Brien received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in sculpture from James Madison University. In 2023, they were an artist in residence at Stove Works in Chattanooga, and at the Elizabeth Murray Artist Residency in Granville, New York.