Jessi Reaves' Sculptures Confront Domestic Labor at American Academy of Arts and Letters

Jessi Reaves (b. 1986, Portland, OR) presents 'process invented the mirror' at the American Academy of Arts and Letters in New York, running until July 3, 2026. The exhibition features sculptures that challenge assumptions about everyday objects, incorporating severed mid-century furniture limbs, crude woodworking projects, and domestic self-sufficiency items like lazy Susans and bachelor's stools. A distorted image of a New Deal mural depicting men mining steel and milling lumber grounds the installation. The show originated at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis last fall, where Reaves introduced 'municipal dimensionality' elements such as a drooping green curtain. For the New York iteration, she has altered and remixed display materials into modular sculptures.