The project is a long-term research endeavor into American agricultural and industrial architecture, specifically the slaughterhouse. American industrial architecture occupies an important place in the development of modernist architecture and urban design, inspiring a generation of European architects such as Walter Gropius and Le Corbusier. Writing on this historical overlap has largely focused on grain elevators and factories as inspiration for the International Style, and omitted the slaughterhouse or abattoir’s presence in this narrative. This omission opens onto a larger set of questions about the relationship between modernism and death on conceptual, political, and material levels.

Aria Dean is an artist and writer based in New York. Recent solo and group exhibitions and performances include: Quiet as It's Kept: Whitney Biennial 2022, Suite!, REDCAT, Los Angeles (2021); Show Your Work Little Temple, Greene Naftali, New York; Studio Parasite, CORDOVA, Barcelona; Made in L.A., Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2020) Greene Naftali, New York (2020), MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge (2020); Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo (2019); Institute for Contemporary Art at Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond (2019); Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia (2019); Centre d’Art Contemporaine Genève, Geneva (2019); The MAC, Belfast (2019); Tai Kwun, Hong Kong (2019); Schinkel Pavillon, Berlin (2018); Swiss Institute, New York (2018); and de Young Museum, San Francisco (2017). Her writing has appeared in publications including Artforum, Art in America, e-flux, The New Inquiry, X-TRA Contemporary Art Quarterly, Spike Quarterly, Kaleidoscope Magazine, Texte zur Kunst, and CURA Magazine. In 2021, she was a lecturer in the MFA program at Columbia University.