Jun 12, 2026 – Jun 25, 2026
Lampenflora, an installation by Tra Bouscaren including work by Jeremy Ripley
Tra Bouscaren and Jeremy Ripley make art about death and business and the business of death. Lampenflora is a reflection on legacy media. Body bag sculptures made from reclaimed billboards lie on the floor like inventory awaiting customers. Neon-spiked billboard vinyls, cut and resewn into quilted absurdity, hang from the ceiling and walls. Digital collages composed of photos of the physical sculpture in the gallery pre-digest exhibition content.
Special thanks to the people who assisted in building the installation: Flavia Lovatelli, Jeanee Bourque, Sharon Funderburk, Brittany Watkins, Mila McKenzie, Kate Timbes, Nyjah Mitchell, and Max Hardy. Thanks also to Hex Neon in Durham, NC, and to Craig from the Neon Shop in Atlanta, who helped us source the glass for this show.
Gallery Hours are Thursday – Sunday, 1-5pm
Artist Bio
Tra Bouscaren is a post-disciplinary artist focused on spectacle at the crossroads of waste culture and the surveillance state.
Bouscaren has exhibited at Vittorio Manalese (Berlin), the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona, the Victor I Fils Gallery (Madrid), the Malta Biennial (Birgu), Ammerman Triennial (New London), Mattress Factory Museum (Pittsburgh), Fort Mason Center for the Arts (San Francisco), Florida Prize Exhibition at Orlando Museum of Art, Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts (Philadelphia) and Lincoln Center (NYC), among other venues.
Research presentations and publications include: RE: SOURCE Conference on the Histories of Media Art, Science and Technology (Venice), Dallas Contemporary, MOCA Tucson, Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History, Stony Brook University Conference on Art and Philosophy, Studies In Control Societies Journal, Ildo Lobo Center for Culture (Praia), CAA Conferences (Chicago and LA), the Rubin Center for Visual Arts (El Paso), and the FLAT Journal (UCLA). Bouscaren builds projects with a broad array of visual artists, performers, hackers, musicians, and scholars through the Expanded Media Lab, which he founded in 2019.
Education
PhD Candidate, Media Study, State University of New York at Buffalo (ABD)
MFA, Interdisciplinary Fine Arts, University of Pennsylvania
BA, Philosophy, Yale University, with Distinction
Artist Statement
Tra Bouscaren builds environments from the afterlife of advertising and infrastructure. Using salvaged billboards, e-waste, neon, and demolition metals, he assembles unstable images, sculptures, and installations. The work treats spectacle as raw material and subject: slogans become skins; words become texture, scars of circulation and sculptural production blur. Bouscaren’s work approaches spectacle as a subject, in terms of its own materials, bringing them back to haunt it like a dead mirror.
