Exhibition Text

The functioning hot tub at the center of Los Angeles–based artist Tita Cicognani’s (b. 1993, New York City) installation offers an environment of potential physical contact and intimacy in an institutional context typically designed to promote sterility and cleanliness. Customized as part of a larger installation that includes video, sound, and other media works, Cicognani’s hot tub is a device through which museum visitors might temporarily reconcile their relationship to germs and the perilousness of the body. The environment most readily resembles an alien love hotel, decomposing traditional markers of love and romance in order to further underscore their foreignness and unfamiliarity in an art museum. Cicognani’s installation is populated by digital avatars that displace the body of the artist and further aid in the uncanny misrecognition of one’s self as a stable and resolute entity. The presentation at the Hammer marks the artist’s first solo exhibition in an institution.

Hammer Projects: Tita Cicognani is organized by Aram Moshayedi, Robert Soros Senior Curator, with Nicholas Barlow, curatorial assistant.