Ashleigh Abbott (AERA) is a multidisciplinary artist based in New York City.
She builds speculative mythologies through sculpture, text, image, and performance—narratives that live in the friction between synthetic and sacred, animal and apparatus, damage and devotion. Her work begins with the body—its thresholds, betrayals, and stubborn desires—and expands outward into environments shaped by inheritance, extraction, and longing.
A former documentary photographer, Abbott’s materials now speak in multiple registers: salt and synthetic hair, repurposed garments turned beasts, dyed resin skins pulled from digital scans, rhinestones, metal, marbles, braided textiles, projected light, sound. Every form becomes a carrier of myth and memory, stripped of sentiment but not of charge.
Her process is research-driven, drawing from somatics, ecological theory, speculative fiction, and the detritus of algorithmic culture. She’s interested in the breakdown of categories—of gender, species, truth—and how bodies metabolize ideology. Her hybrid forms ask: What does it mean to be tender inside systems that reward disembodiment? What kinds of knowing get dismissed as irrational, soft, or impure?
In one work, a new-mythical figure glistens with salt and plastic hair, straddling beauty culture and ritual exorcism. In another, a deconstructed garment—once worn, now monstrous—spills across the floor like a creature refusing to resolve. These are not characters; they are transmissions.
Abbott is interested in vulnerability as a form of resistance. Her works don’t offer clear answers but open psychic seams. They play with spectacle, draw on ancient materials, and leave space for glitch, error, excess. She’s not building a clean future or mourning a lost past—she’s making space for something with breath, teeth, and maybe a sense of humor.
She has been a fellow at The New School, recipient of the Covington Rhodes Prize and the BDC Award. Her work has been exhibited at Grace Exhibition Space, Gallery MC, Aronson Gallery, and internationally in Spain, Bulgaria, and Morocco.
CV
EXHIBITION RECORD
2025 Radial Minds, Oorja Garga, Brooklyn, NY
2024 Exquisite Corpse, Chicken Coop Collective, Brooklyn, NY
Experimental performance in collaboration with Carolina Muñoza, Grace Exhibition Space
NYC Glass House Spring Open Studios, Glass House Studios, NYC
2023 Thesis Show Aaronson/Keller Gallery Manhattan, NYC, NY
Museum Interaction, SMK Museum, Copenhagen, Denmark
There is Only After, MC Gallery, Manhattan, NYC, NY
2022 ALGO(RYTHM), Tanthem Collective, Manhattan, NYC, NY
First Steps into Fire (Performance), This Flesh is All I have to Offer Group Show, Grace Exhibition Space, New York, NY
Spring 2022 Open Studios, Parsons 25 E 13th Building, NYC, NY
Everything Her You Saw Last Night, Group Show, 25 E 13th Gallery at Parsons, NYC
2021 Sex, Money, Trash - Group Show, 25 E 13th Gallery, Manhattan (NYC), NY
Material as Metaphor, Group Show, 25 E 13th Gallery, New York, NY
Her Strength, Collab with Jodie Herrera and New Mexico United, Albuquerque, NM
2020 Covington Rhode Senior Prize Winner Exhibition, Virtual, worldwide & Albuquerque, NM
Regional winner presentation, Bio Design Challenge International Virtual Exhibit, worldwide
2019 Intersections of Digital and Physical Media Group Show, UNM ArtsLAB, Albuquerque, NM
2018 Urban Abstractions, Solo Show, Ojo Optique, Albuquerque, NM
2012 International Symposium of Electronic Arts (ISEA), Albuquerque Museum with Meow Wolf, Albuquerque, NM
Backseat Driver, solo, The Orpheus, Albuquerque, NM
2011 Arte Nazari, City Invitational Photo Show, Meknes, Morocco
2010 Immigrants in Sports, Group Show, Granada, Spain
2000 De-generated Poetry, Group Show, Seattle Central Community College, Seattle, WA
1998 Solo exhibit, Portraits on Metal, Aztec Cafe, Santa Fe, NM
Emerging photographers of the Southwest, Regional Juried Photography Competition Exhibition, Santa Fe, NM
CURATING
2023 There is Only After, Gallery MC, Manhattan, NYC
2022 Parsons 25 E 13th Gallery Curator Fellowship, The New School, NYC
Everything Her You Saw Last Night, Group Show, 25 E 13th Gallery, (NYC), NY
Trash, Sex, Money, 25 E 13th Gallery, (NYC), NY
2013 Love, Hydra Gallery. Albuquerque, NM
2012 Home, Hydra Gallery. Albuquerque, NM
RESIDENCIES
2024 Italienska Palatset Residency, Vaxjo, Sweden (self directed)
Ovtcharov Art Residency, Novo Selo, Veliko Tarnovo, Bulgaria (self directed)
AWARDS
2022 Curatorial Fellow for 25 E13th Gallery, Parsons Fine Arts, The New School
2020 Covington Rhode Senior Prize Winner
Winner of New Mexico Chapter of Bio Design Challenge (BDC)
2016 9th International Color Awards Nominee, Tracks, International (Online)
1998 2nd Place Winner, Emerging photographers of the Southwest, Regional Juried Photography Competition Exhibition, Santa Fe, NM
EDUCATION
2023 Parsons, New School, New York, NY- MFA
2021 University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico - BFA
2011 University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM - BUS
2009 Universidad de Granada, Granada, Spain
2008 Gaia Education, Certificate in Sustainable Urban Design, Albuquerque, NM
Gabor Maté compassionate inquiry certificate, Albuquerque, NM
2007 Curandersimo certificate, Oaxaca, Mexico
Medical Spanish certificate, Oaxaca, Mexico
2001 Santa Fe Community College, Santa Fe, New Mexico
2000 Seattle Central Community College, Seattle, Washington
1999 Documentary Film internship, Subhari Network, Mumbai, India
1998 Scott Baxter, Commercial Photography, Scottsdale, AZ, internship
1997 College of Santa Fe, Santa Fe, New Mexico
PRESS
2020 KUNM University Showcase with Megan Kamerick, Brillo The Snail, Radio Interview
KRQE Local News, Brillo The Snail, Televised Interview
UNM Newsroom, Brillo The Snail, Print Interview
Daily Lobo (UNM University Paper), Brillo The Snail, Print Interview
ACTIVISM & VOLUNTEERING
2023 Co-founded Banned Book Club for Kids
2016 Babes and Bullies, Pitbull Rescue, Photographer
2012 Crossroads For Women, photo documentary, women in transition out of prison program, Albuquerque, NM
2006-2010 Casa de Salud (formerly Topakahl Clinic), Medical Assistant, Volunteer Organizing and training, Grant Writing, Handbook Writing, Albuquerque, NM
2007 Agencia De Rap, Fundraising and equipment procurement, Volunteering, Training, Havana, Cuba
2006-2009 Hip Hop en Cuba, Fundraising, Party Planning, Materials Supplying, Havana, Cuba/Albuquerque, NM
2006-2008 Kalpulli Izkalli, Volunteering, Book Keeping, Organization of Volunteers, Albuquerque,
ABQ2Cuba, Volunteer Organizing, Materials and Supply Gathering, Fundraising, Party Planning, Resistance and Protest Training, Albuquerque, NM
IFCO/Pastor for Peace, Organizing, Materials and Supply Gathering, Fundraising Volunteering, Albuquerque, NM/Cuba
PUBLICATION AS AUTHOR
2012 “Cuentame Ya- Experiences in Morocco During Arab Spring 2010-2011; the Protesting Frontlines, Child Immigration, and an Exiled Candidate from the Democratic Republic of the Congo” Published online 2012, removed from online for revisions.