Ilana Harris-Babou (b. 1991, Brooklyn, United States; based in Williamstown and Brooklyn)
"Decision Fatigue" 2020
HD Video (8:32 min.)
Collection of the artist

The points of departure for Ilana Harris-Babou’s work are contemporary forms of digital media and the ways we insatiably consume them—think of the glut of home improvement and cooking shows and beauty tutorials made available instantaneously online daily. Via these numerous digital interfaces, our “realities” of daily life become reinforced through personally-constructed algorithms. Harris-Babou is acutely aware of this abject irony of engagement and uses it as comedic fuel for sending a “trojan horse” to consenting audiences.

In Decision Fatigue, the artist’s mother Sheila Harris plays the leading role of “Sheila,” a beauty expert teaching from her bathroom, a setting full of consumption and creation. We not only witness Sheila’s improvised deadpan performance, but we also become implicated as one of her anonymous followers. Her language and actions come together in absurd ways: a rose quartz facial roller is promoted to relax oneself in preparation to enjoy a TV dinner; she espouses the benefits of washing down a multivitamin with Pepsi, which, she admits, she is addicted to. Sheila also offers us an alternate world of beauty supplies and their demonstrated value, however fantastical, by touching, applying, and sampling ready-made products such as chocolate chip soap “from the Amazon” and a Cheeto face mask.

The title sardonically nods to our overwhelmed mental states regarding media consumption and to our bodies as sites of digital commodification. Via this witty and biting critique, Harris-Babou highlights the absurdity of health and beauty standards that many don’t have the resources or time to maintain while keeping a tone ripe with fantasy. In a year of worldwide stay-at-home orders, this video touches on global realities and insecurities around boredom and an innate desire for collective approval.

By Rachel Reese (based in Chattanooga, United States)