Ready to Die

In this solo exhibition at Heft, Auriea returns to mythologies in her own likeness: part self-portrait, part vessel, part mythic double. Ready To Die transforms the gallery into a burial chamber, where artworks become offerings. Monuments, statues, vessels, carvings, and intimate talismans inhabit a chamber of passage – an environment shaped by death, rebirth, memory, and transformation. The talismans – handheld sculptural artifacts and vitrines, each with a digital companion – are known as The Amulets. This series of works is central to the show, conceived as protectors: intimate enough to be held, yet carrying the mythology of the entire exhibition. Amulets ares a limited series of unique, hand-finished sculptures in marble, ceramic, and pewter. Each sculpture is paired with a digital counterpart as well – a spatial Gaussian-splat. Alongside the Amulets, the gallery hosts major works: sculpture in marble, milled wood panels, and bronze-ready wax-dripped urns. A sculptural practice spanning materials, uniting mythologies and personal lore. Since the mid-1990s, Auriea has treated technology, networks, and interaction as artistic materials. Her works are intimate digital experiences that join mythology, autobiography, desire, and play. In collaboration with Michaël Samyn as Entropy8Zuper! and Tale of Tales, Auriea created some of the earliest and most important art games, conceived as expressive environments in which play is organized around presence rather than winning, conquest, scores, or fixed endings. Over the past decade, Auriea has brought the figures of her digital worlds into material life. Mythic, autobiographical, monstrous, and divine, they move between screen and object, each in full embrace of the other. Her unrelenting pursuit of new techniques, materials, and methodologies continues to drive the unaffected, raw authenticity of form and texture that’s at the heart of her work. Auriea’s one-of-a-kind practice treats each sculptural material without pretention – intuitively moving between hand, machine, body, and image to transform the ancient and familiar into her unique vision and lore. Fall 2026 opens a major new chapter in Auriea’s practice, opening with her Ready To Die show at Heft, and inclusive of multiple major Fellowships.

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300 Broome St

Downtown, NY