2025 Infinite Expansion Grants awardee, Human Resources, presents CAREOTICS: on giving and taking
October 30, 2025
CAREOTICS: on giving and taking
Panteha Abareshi at Human Resources Los Angeles (HRLA)
November 1–16, 2025
Exhibition Opening: November 1, 2025, 12–6pm (gallery hours), 7–9pm (opening reception)
Gallery Hours: Wednesday–Sunday, 12–6pm or by appointment
LOS ANGELES — Human Resources Los Angeles (HRLA) presents CAREOTICS: on giving and taking, a solo exhibition by Panteha Abareshi that examines how the disabled body is relegated to the fringes of visibility and yet made into a spectacle, bringing a complex duality to the nature of disability as performance. For Abareshi, the absence of autonomy makes room for fetishism to blossom, as the disabled individual is made into a tool for the able-bodied viewer to use as linguistic metaphor and/or as sexualized fetish object. In their work, the disabled body becomes a vessel for the taboo corporeal fears and desires of the able-bodied audience.
Panteha Abareshi’s artistic practice is rooted in their existence as a chronically ill/disabled body contending with multiple medical illnesses, at the foundation of which is sickle cell zero beta thalassemia— a genetic blood disorder that causes debilitating pain and bodily deterioration, both of which increase with age. Their work explores the complexities of living within a body that is highly monitored, constantly examined, and made to feel like a specimen, critically interrogating the sick/disabled body’s place within medical institutions.
CAREOTICS: on giving and taking is organized by Jennifer Doyle, Caroline Ellen Liou, and Jeanne Vaccaro. Major support for the exhibition is provided by the Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts, with additional funding from the English Department at the University of California, Riverside.
Exhibition Programs
Opening Reception
Saturday, November 1, 2025 | 7–9pm | Human Resources, Los Angeles (HRLA) | Free to RSVP
Exhibition Walkthrough with Panteha Abareshi, Jennifer Doyle, and Jeanne Vaccaro
Sunday, November 2, 2025 | 2–4pm | Human Resources, Los Angeles (HRLA) | Free to RSVP
Reading by Panteha Abareshi, moderated by Johanna Hedva
Saturday, November 8, 2025 | 7–9pm | Human Resources, Los Angeles (HRLA) | Free to RSVP
Panteha Abareshi shares the intimate, the hyper-personal, and the crip-theoretical in this reading of unreleased writing. Beginning with fictive pieces of an autobiographical nature, the reading will also include the recitation of the poetics featured in the exhibition, as well as new written work around the pieces presented in CAREROTICS: on giving and taking. Followed by a Q&A with writer, artist, and musician Johanna Hedva.
FULL FRONTAL CRIP: A Cripples-To-The-Front Event
November 13, 2025 | 6–11pm, 8pm Performance | LINT [fka NAVEL], 418 Venice Blvd. Los Angeles, 90015 | Pay what you can, tickets available at Eventbrite
The world we move through, the space we inhabit–– these are fundamentally inaccessible in their physical architecture, but also in their social and emotional frameworks. There is rarely a space for collective being that is accessible and brings the other to the front. So come together for a night of music, movement, stillness, dancing, sitting, and collectiveness as we bring the Cripple to the front. All bodies welcome, all bodies wanted. Let’s party in pain, let’s be together. FULL FRONTAL CRIP. Performance by Panteha Abareshi and Peter Kalisch, to be followed by a DJ set by Alima Lee.
Fetish Material and Pornographic Screening and Lecture
Friday, November 14, 2025 | 7:30–9pm | Whammy! Analog Media, 2514 Sunset Blvd. Los Angeles, 90026 | Tickets available for $15 at Whammy!
Join us for a screening/sharing of pornographic and fetishistic materials collected and examined by Panteha Abareshi over the course of their research. The artist will lead a lecture-based discussion around the sick/Crip body’s representation in these explicit materials. This program will be an exploration of how the disabled body is made into and used as [sex] object, and an interrogation of consent, control, pleasure and power through a close examination of a slew of porno vids, fetish pics and kinky JPEGs.
Please note: 𝗧𝗛𝗜𝗦 𝗣𝗥𝗢𝗚𝗥𝗔𝗠 𝗜𝗦 𝗡𝗦𝗙𝗪 & 𝟭𝟴+, bear in mind that we will be watching and discussing explicit pornographic material, and some of these may be difficult and challenging to view. This program is first and foremost a safe space of non-judgement, but also one dedicated to pushing into what is most taboo, unknown and uncomfortable as a means of expanding how we know, see and image the sick/Crip subject.
Exhibition Walkthrough with Panteha Abareshi and Ron Athey
Sunday, November 16, 2025 | 2–4pm | Human Resources, Los Angeles (HRLA) | Free to RSVP