Big Beige Eyes is a solo exhibition of work by Kalli Niedoba inspired by the upscale beige-tinted interior of a Los Angeles branch of Citibank. The bank has invested in interior design as a means to orchestrate social order; The bank seeks to meet the goals of finance. As people line up, they are accounted for as customers of varying class standing – and a pseudo-democratic welcome desk stands waiting as an artifice of infrastructure.
In this body of work, Niedoba adopts the bank’s warmth in the interior of 221A, creating an audio loop uttering a favourite vacation spot, mounting vertical blinds to cover up what shouldn’t be seen and installing a large and comforting extruded T that sits just below the chin. Niedoba’s work emulates the aggression of good manners the banks’ interior lends, demonstrating how the dominant class evokes financial narratives through routinized body language.