Panteha Abareshi's work is rooted in her existence as a chronically ill/disabled body existing with multiple medical illnesses, at the root of which is sickle cell zero beta thalassemia- a genetic blood disorder that causes debilitating pain, and bodily deterioration that both increase with age. Through her work, she aims to discuss the complexities of living within a body that is highly monitored, constantly examined, and made to feel like a specimen. Taking images that are recognizable as “human” forms, and reducing them to the gestural is a juxtaposition of her own body's objectification, and dissection. Through her performance work, she pushes her body to, and often beyond, the limits of its ability. The radicalized abjectification of her own corporeal form allows for a continued examination of her bodily deterioration, and its connection to a larger context of universal fragility fear, pain and mortality. In her video work and installations, she aims to make the viewer hyper-aware of their own body, and actively employ accessibility as a tool, both withholding and over-extending it as a means of casting light onto the ill/disabled experience. With every piece, her practice traces and documents her body's malfunction, and its disintegration. With this deterioration comes implantation of medical devices, prosthetics, and the use of mobility aids. Her body is the primary medium in her practice, and these materials become vital to the visual language of my work. Currently, she is contemplating the prosthesis, and simultaneous abstraction and mechanization of the fundamentally inorganic “body.”
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