Dahlia Bloomstone, 2025-26
Dahlia (Colón; matronymic maiden name) Bloomstone is a Puerto Rican/American artist and Hunter College MFA graduate with a BFA from Bard College. Dahlia has developed a body of work rooted in video, which has evolved to encompass animation, video games, sculpture, code, dance, film, sound, and performance. However, her focus for the past two years has been on video games. Her practice explores domesticity, joy, respectability politics, social value, and mutual aid. With humor, vulnerability, and political urgency, she surveys the technologies and ecologies around the social value and social implications of sexual commerce and investigates the paradigm shifts in these economies.
She has exhibited with Hauser & Wirth, Beverly's, Rhizome, and Mass Gallery, among others. Dahlia has received prestigious grants and fellowships, including the SPCUNY Actionist grant from the Mellon Foundation and a Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture fellowship. She is a co-founder of New Uncanny Gallery in New York. Recently, her work has been presented at Blade Study Gallery, Electronic Arts Intermix, and CultureHub, as well as the culminating Whitney Museum Independent Study Program show at Westbeth Gallery in May 2025. Dahlia’s work is also affiliated with the White Columns Gallery artist registry.
Currently, Dahlia is a Professor of Contemporary Art at Ramapo College and a participant in the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program (ISP).
Exhibition: Unless the Outcome is Income
Hewitt Hall, Whitebox Gallery, Room 30
On view Tuesdays-Saturdays, November 4 - December 6, 2025*
Opening Reception: Friday, November 7, 5-7PM
*Exhibition closed from November 25 - November 29 for Thanksgiving Break
Unless the Outcome is Income: Roblox is a playable Roblox game that engages with the history and politics surrounding the popular children’s gaming platform. The game considers and engages with Roblox’s new content guidelines, where a game is 17+ if it has romantic themes, including non-sexual expressions of love or affection, or if it is considered a sensitive issue defined as “a current sensitive social, political, or religious issue that is both polarizing and emotionally charged.” Roblox has an enduring “sex problem,” as strip club games and predators continue to appear despite “heavy moderation,” revealing broader cultural politics. In the game, the avatar is tasked with a few moral choices that amount to arbitrary scores. Based on her choices, she will be transported to different rooms, where she engages with either romantic connections or she is being paid for them. In both, the avatar is moralized. “NSPM-7 says any of the following can be indicators of violence: anti-capitalism, extremism on gender, hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on morality.” [All of Dahlia's games have been newly rated 17+ for romantic themes and sensitive issues. Without this tag, they would’ve been removed from the platform on Sept. 30th, 2025.] The game is framed around ideas and language surrounding work, survival, and capital: “taking your work home with you,” or “becoming your work,” using different visual signifiers like damask patterns or a domestic gamer chair.
Unless the Outcome is Income: Animation engages with similar themes, telling a story through digestible, colorful, cuteness aesthetics that think through the interpersonal vs. systemic and structural issues erotic workers face. The limbless fish character has supported her artistic practice and life with affective work, and her thoughts often drift into fables during lap dances—like one where a mother, after falling in love with a former male stripper, learns to become a more open and understanding parent. After Fish teaches her class, she thinks about how she might just have escaped being “age trapped” and what it means to step into different forms of respectability.
Unless the Outcome is Income includes a new animated video piece, a playable video game, and installation elements.
Workshops: Pandemic Roblox!
Tuesday, November 18, 5-6PM
Saturday, December 6, 2-3PM
Screening Room, Hewitt Hall, Room 27
Artist and scholar Dahlia Bloomstone invites visitors to a participatory program reflecting on the shifting digital landscapes of the COVID-19 pandemic five years later. This program considers the ongoing socioeconomic, political, and interpersonal effects of the pandemic.
We will first view new video/video performance work, "Does that hurt the fish?", followed by a gameplay session “together” on individual devices of Roblox game Little Darlings, sick to navigate pandemic-related ephemera in real time. In the game chat, participants will share reflections and COV!D secrets, while also considering Roblox as a politically fraught, shifting platform that mirrors broader culture. What does it mean that we’ve lived through a pandemic, and how can we collectively prepare for the next?
"Does that hurt the fish?" is centered around a mundane exchange between a regular client and erotic worker at an aquarium during an impending pandemic, just before businesses are officially closed, aiming to capture the complexities of specific kinds of affective labor under the landscapes of U.S. capitalism and healthcare. It highlights the enduring sexual micro-economies that defied the dire, apocalyptic warnings of the pandemic. The narrative thinks through the absurdity of the strip club during the pandemic — many operated and remained open despite the government shutdown and remained secretly open, including the artist's own place of work.
Participants should bring their own devices with Roblox and Instagram apps pre-downloaded. While all devices are welcome, the use of a laptop computer or iPad is strongly encouraged for the best gameplay experience. Headphones are also recommended. If you cannot attend in person, join the Roblox game here. A screen recording of the collective gameplay can be found on Bloomstone’s website after the program.
Please note: to join the Roblox game, you will need a Roblox account that is age verified to be 17+.