Aviva Silverman – A House Can’t Flood That Never Gets Built

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"Maybe A House Can’t Flood that Never Gets Built answers to this maxim: we’re rendered as giant beings in looking at it, craning our necks over these microcosms of infrastructure. We’re looking at ants but the ants are us. Or in this case, the ants have (mercifully) taken over. On ants, Rabbi Shimon ben Chalafta offered this: “One may learn from their actions that they have no king; as, if they had a king, would they not need the king’s edict to execute their fellow ant?” Among other things, this formulation seems to suggest that the root of all violence is in hierarchy, that were the edict not possible the execution would not occur. Maybe we don’t have to bend to the law, but we’d still like to bend down, to examine a smaller creature and find a shred of ourselves in it. Or maybe we bend over ourselves – to be reminded of our own form, to wonder where we will be shuttled off to next. The examination of one’s navel may be thought to connote myopic tendencies, but the practice of meditating on it and finding the divine there still stands."

_excerpt from the exhibition text

Aviva Silverman (1986, New York) works in sculpture and performance to dissect the messy radiance between the symbolic and actual. Votive forms, like dioramas, miniature trains, blown glass, and ornate tableaux, are viewed through a contemporary queer lens, resulting in a dynamic study of conflicting histories of communion. Solo exhibitions and performances include: We Have Decided Not To Die, VEDA, Florence (2019), The Living Watch Over The Living ii, LVX Pavilion of the Volksbühne, Rosa-Luxemburg- Platz, Berlin (2019), Protect Me from What I Am, Swiss Institute, New York (2019) and Twister at MoMA P.S.1 (2016). Group exhibitions include Thunder and Light, La Casa Encendida, Madrid (2022), Pen pressure, Haus Wien, Wien (2020), Witch Hunt, Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenaghen, DK (2020), Greater New York, MoMA P.S.1, New York (2015); It Can Howl, Atlanta Contemporary, Atlanta, Georgia (2016); and I Surrender Dear, Salzburger Kunstverein, Salzburg, Austria (2016).