What does the [Object*] promise?Nothing short of another cosmos.
A radically different set of relations is possible.
Gala Prudent's work, spanning photographic process, sculpture, and writing, seeks to propose and invent refreshed methods of relation between who we consider to be subjects and what we consider to be objects. Informed by philosophy, semiotic analysis, and an expansive canon of black media and theory, Prudent uses photographic and dimensional materials to interrogate the flattening of social and historical subjects into instruments for social stratification and tools made towards a collective architecture of humanity. Extending frameworks devised by poets and post-humanist writers alike, Prudent offers that the distinct social categories of subject and object can function as conceptual and mnemonic kin. She understands objectification, which joins a variety of marginalized subjects at the hip of thing-like perception and use, to be inevitable — but imagines in response that objects possess an unrecognized capacity for memory, power, and agency.
Gala received her bachelor’s degree in Modern Culture and Media and Visual Art from Brown University, studied Art at The Cooper Union, and was admitted to Yale’s Norfolk Residency. In conjunction with her visual practice, she writes prose about black embodiment, visuality, and contemporary art.