INSTITUTE OF HOW TO DISAPPEAR | Temporary Intake Facility – New YorkOperational Week 01
April 10 – April 17, 2026
Opening: April 10, 6–8 PM
FLOHAUS Gallery is pleased to present Institute of How to Disappear, a project by New York–based artist Mere Cui, on view from April 10 to April 17, 2026, with an opening reception on April 10 from 6 to 8 PM.
Conceived as a temporary institutional installation, the project transforms the gallery into a functioning intake facility operating for one week. This functions as an active administrative site where people come to apply for disappearance.
Within the space, visitors encounter a familiar bureaucratic environment composed of intake desks, application forms, waiting areas, and case files. They enter a system, taking part in procedures that require submission, waiting, and participation. Over the course of the week, applications accumulate, selected cases are processed, and an evolving archive of disappearance takes shape.
The project begins with a reversal. In contemporary life, existence is increasingly tied to visibility within institutional systems—to be registered, documented, and made legible. Institute of How to Disappear proposes an alternate structure: one that processes absence instead of presence. Here, disappearance is not framed as a personal or emotional condition, but as something that can be formally submitted, managed, and archived.
Through this inversion, the work reflects on how institutions define the boundaries of what can appear. To be recorded is to be acknowledged; to remain outside of record is to occupy a different mode of existence. By staging disappearance as an administrative process, the project shifts it into a procedural and collective condition.
Central to the work is its insistence on real interaction. Visitors are not positioned as observers, but as participants whose actions contribute to the system itself. The distinction between audience and infrastructure dissolves as each individual becomes embedded within the operational logic of the space.
About the Artist
Mere Cui is a New York–based artist working primarily through installation. Her practice constructs spatial environments as speculative systems that unfold through use, inviting viewers to engage with them over time. Her work examines how systems organize perception, shape relationships, and determine what becomes visible or remains unseen. Mere Cui is currently completing a dual degree at Parsons School of Design and Eugene Lang College and will continue her studies at Columbia University GSAPP in Computational Design Practices.
