Ava Wanbli

media release: Sertraline Dolls • April 1–October 8, 2023 • Imprint Gallery

In her first solo museum exhibition, Chicago-based new media and performance artist Ava Wanbli brings her video game-based work Sertraline Dolls (2021–22) to the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art. On view in the Imprint Gallery April 1–October 8, 2023, the exhibition will invite visitor engagement with the work.

Sertraline Dolls is a first-person, single-player game merging multiple formats of the artist’s body. The work provides a meditation on self-production through sexual expression and consumption of the body. It also reflects on the complexities of what it means to be a trans woman in sex work.

Set against a neo-gothic background that is cyber-futuristic and psychedelic, viewers who have spent time in open-world games will find the space comforting and familiar. Viewers also become an active participant in the work by playing the game and encountering multiple representations of the artist’s body, each taken from 3D scans over a period of six years that include various poses, guises, and personas.

Admission to MMoCA’s galleries is always free.