Fia Backström

Some people say that WiFi makes their skin break out in hives. Bright lights make one in ten erupt into sneezing fits. For the last month of her season Fia Backström’s work (re-fragment, rim, timbre, trajectory), 2016 re-calibrates similar hypersensitivities. Surfaces have been bristled by electric currents and acids, blotched by the prints of fingers and wood blocks, and whatever else floats through the air. On the walls, technological surfaces—the anodized aluminum of a Mac, plexi smudged like a touch screen—bear the reactions and overreactions to both natural forces and human affect. Together with the weird shadows, stains, and reflections generated in Backström’s environment, the works activate something like a shared autoimmune response; fitting, given that these are the final weeks of the Institute’s downtown space— a room pushing itself out.