Sculpture + Expanded Practices

Allysa Pierre

Allysa Pierre

See it On Campus: Level 1

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(They/Them)

Untitled (The Preparator), 2025

Sculpture is a language of weight—and in this work, it speaks of labor, exhaustion, and invisibility.

Untitled (The Preparator), 2025 is a sculptural inquiry into the architecture of labor that underpins the cultural institution. Composed of wood, worn clothing, and a human figure slumped into a shipping crate, the work captures a moment of ambiguous tension—between collapse and continuation, visibility and erasure.

Rooted in my own experience working behind the scenes in gallery spaces, this piece centers the preparator: the technician, installer, handler—those whose labor is essential yet systemically obscured. The figure is anonymous and unheroic, leaning into the crate not as a gesture of performance, but of necessity. It is a body caught in the fatigue of repetition, the strain of being necessary but unacknowledged.

The shipping crate, typically relegated to back rooms and loading docks, serves as both stage and symbol. It represents not just the physical infrastructure of the art world, but the institutional mechanisms that prioritize polish over process, surface over support. By placing the figure in direct contact with it—literally folded into the system—the work confronts the viewer with a visual metaphor for institutional dependence and disregard.

Materially, the use of wood, clothing, and a human body resists abstraction. The physicality is deliberate: the rawness of wood, the sag of fabric, the weight of flesh. These elements assert presence, offering no easy escape from the reality of what is being shown—a body at work, and nearly worn through.

This piece is not a protest, but a reckoning. It is a recognition of the people who enable visibility while remaining unseen themselves. Untitled (The Preparator) asks: who holds the space, and at what cost?

Allysa Pierre

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I am a queer artist-curator working across sculpture, collage, and curation. My practice is rooted in the intersections of queerness, disability, and community, where personal history becomes a site for both critique and care. Through material experimentation and critical theory, I explore the boundaries of form, space, and representation—
always with a focus on accessibility, engagement,
and transformation.

Inspired by Jack Halberstam’s The Queer Art of Failure, my sculptural work reinterprets found
objects and domestic forms, pushing their limits
until they verge on the nonsensical. Often
manifesting as furniture-like sculptures, these
pieces engage with the aesthetics of low art theory and challenge our expectations of utility, comfort,and space. By creating playful, approachable
objects that invite rest, interaction, or even
confusion, I aim to activate communal
participation and dialogue—whether within
institutional settings or public space. These works
function as disruptions: soft interventions that
reimagine daily realities and foster moments of
shared reflection.
My curatorial and collage practices are similarly
informed by thinkers such as José Esteban
Muñoz, David Getsy, Sara Ahmed, Michel
Foucault, and Judith Butler. I am particularly
drawn to third-space theory and the merging of
high and low cultural aesthetics, using these
frameworks to rethink exhibition-making as a
deeply ethical, collaborative process. As a curator,
I intentionally bridge my sculptural perspective
with community-oriented curation—designing
formats that are experimental, responsive, and
grounded in access. At Neighbourhood Gallery, I
developed site-specific installations and
participatory programs that challenged traditional
gallery hierarchies and centred underrepresented
voices.

I believe the most urgent work in art today lies in
reimagining not only what art is, but how and for
whom it is made. My dual perspective as both
artist and curator allows me to work fluidly
between making and facilitating, always with an eye toward inclusion, disruption, and care.
Whether through an interactive sculpture, a
radical rehang, or a community-led exhibition, my goal is to create spaces where art becomes a tool
for connection, resistance, and transformation.

Release Granted

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