Ayden LeRoux

Ayden LeRoux and Idio Gallery are your hosts for an intimate installation of four beds, each covered in a di erent material that provides a unique sensory experience. On a pilgrimage to the earthworks of the Southwest, LeRoux harvested salt from around Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty and used the preservative to crystallize bed sheets. Other beds are lled with such symbolic materials as soil and rice. Pages of women’s diaries and dating advice are sewn together to wrap another. e seduction of beauty and intimate space gives way to darker issues: assumptions about domestic labor, femininity, sexuality, and the treacherous border of preservation and destruction, illness, and health. Each bed installation is fertile ground for an indelible sleep.

(Untitled), Four Beds receives the mark of the body and explores the experiences held within and between the sheets. Making this private—yet universal—space public, visitors are invited to spend the night in a bed of their choosing by making a reservation through Airbnb. With this exhibition, Idio Gallery hosts a conversation about the relationship between art and hospitality—what does it mean to surrender and be vulnerable in an art space? What are the poetics of labor that exist in operating a gallery? How is hospitality embedded in the act of creating art? Is hospitality an act necessary to the survival of art spaces? rough her experiential installations, LeRoux explores what generosity and intimacy look like in the art world.

Far from the traditional museum and gallery experience, this work is meant to be touched.Between November 3rd and 27th, viewers may reserve the bed of their choice for a night through Airbnb for a nominal fee. (Press passes available.)

A panel about the relationship between art, hospitality, and women’s roles in such will be presented in conjunction with the exhibition on Saturday, November 5th, from 6-8pm. e panel will be facilitated by Laurel Ptak (Director of Triangle Arts Association) and speakers include artist Ayden LeRoux, Emma Sulkowicz (artist, Mattress Performance [Carry at Weight]), Jamie Warren (PhD in American History, Indiana University), and Montana Simone (Idio Director).

Ayden LeRoux is an artist and author whose practice spans installation, sculpture, video, photography, performance, poetry and essay in order to explore intimacy. Her work has been presented by chashama, Flux Factory, and the International Photography Festival. She has exhibited in China, Cuba, Greece, New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. She has participated in residencies at Flux Factory, the Ace Hotel, and Space on Ryder Farm. Additionally, she is the Assistant Director of Odyssey Works, which studies the life of one individual in order to create massive, multidisciplinary performances for that person. She is the author of Isolation and Amazement, published by Samsara Press in 2012, and the co-author of Odyssey Works: Transformative Experiences for an Audience of One, written with Abraham Burickson and published by Princeton Architectural Press in 2016.