Slumpies are a series of sculptures that position themselves as utilitarian objects. Slumpies acknowledge our ever-increasing relationship with technological devices, relieving us of the need to support our own bodies while we interface with the digital world. They are a solution to an endemic problem of our contemporary moment—the type of issue that can arise only in the context of a technologically driven, luxury-saturated, consumer-oriented marketplace. Mayer’s awkwardly rendered Slumpies, with their bulky shape and strange palette speckled with glitter, suggest a lack of conscientious design—an ad hoc solution made from simple materials that stands in direct contradiction to the sleek forms and designs, and the marketing culture, that defines our intimate dependence on technology.

Jillian Mayer (b.1984 Miami) is a Cuban-American visual artist and filmmaker whose work explores how technology affects our identities, lives, and experiences. Her videos, sculptures, online projects, photography, performance, and installations question how our physical world and bodies are impacted and reshaped by our participation in a digital landscape. Mayer investigates the point of tension between these two worlds, making work that attempts to inhabit the increasingly porous boundary between the two. Her unexpected forms, materials, and colors along with palpable wit and humor relentlessly model ways to subvert capital-driven modes of technological innovation.

Select exhibitions and performances include MoMA, MoCA:NoMi, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Bass Museum, Pérez Art Museum, Contemporary Museum of Montreal, Kunst Aarhus, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Sundance, SXSW, and the New York Film Festival. Her work’s been featured in publications such as Art In America, New York Times, Art Papers, ArtNews and ArtForum.