Exhibition texts

Shelter in Place, conceived in partnership with Mana Contemporary’s Digital Programming Initiative, will be the first PDF-OBJECTS exhibition without a physical installation.

Shelter in Place opens online Friday May 15, 2020 with a performance by participating artist Bahareh Khoshooee and readings by participating artists. The exhibition and a recording of our zoom reception will be available soon for download.

Initiated in 2016 by artists Jason Lazarus (Florida) and Sean Ward (New York), PDF-OBJECTS is a growing collection of embedded text-object sculptures.

Participating artists are asked to submit to organizers:

-a single PDF of a text that significantly informs their practice
-a description of a commonly available object (valued at $20 USD or less)
-instructions on how to sculpturally embed the PDF and object together

PDF-OBJECTS is an invitation into the artist’s thinking and practice–an embodied library, a sculptural field–each object a footnote to the text, or vice versa. The design of the project encourages new moments of scholarship, pedagogy, and intimacy between artist and audience.  Participating artists are able to update their PDF-OBJECTS at any time in order to reflect their current research and practice.