IKEA: a place to buy starter furniture, get in a heated fight with a partner, and now a uniquely commercial canvas to create contemporary art. What does that mean? Good question! IKEA Residency is an artist residency founded by Mary Boo Anderson and Zoë Blair-Schlagenhauf that welcomes creatives working across genres and media for a month-long session at the studio that is the Burbank IKEA.
Upon acceptance, residents are curated into pairs and from there it’s up to the artists to decide what they would like to work on—a choose your own adventure of sorts. Make a zine, film a poem, or even write a musical puppet show. All Mary Boo and Zoë ask is that residents meet at IKEA with their partner at least once and let the industrialist leviathan inspire you, either ambiently or literally… and hopefully make something cool together.
In this video series, “Just looking,” IKEA Residency and Variable West invite you to peek into the art practices of the IKEA residents, to listen in on their conversations, and to get lost in the IKEA maze with them.
Videos will be posted on the Variable West Instagram and archived below.