Conflated

Conflated features artists who explore inflatables and their relationship to our bodies, environments, and cultures. When inhaling and exhaling, our bodies transform through the process of inflation and deflation – this cycle of breathing serves as a framework, through which a wide array of experience, behaviour, and expression can be examined.   

The artists investigate the possibilities of the inflatable through participatory works that entice audiences into finding new forms of covid-safe intimacy, audio that draws parallels between ASMR breath and the ecological destruction of glaciers melting, and video of convulsing bodies that morph with inflatables. The idea of inflation and deflation are provoked to offer new possibilities in our contemporary world.  

Conflated presents a range of inflatable materials, from balloons to digital audio and video informed by inflatable processes, positioning the inflatable as the medium of our times, prompting us to explore the inherent plasticity and transformative potential of that which can be blown up. The works conflate synthetic forms with human vulnerabilities, the abject, uncanny, eco-anxiety, colonised land, and the breath.