Dust Collectors

KT Abadir-Mullally and Paolo Mentasti

Runs/ June 5th - July 26th, 2026

Reception/ Friday June 5th, 6-9PM

Hours: Sat - Sun from 2-6PM

What will remain of the present once it becomes history? Dust Collectors, a two-person exhibition by KT Abadir-Mullally and Paolo Mentasti at Grizzly Grizzly, approaches this question through sculpture, archives, and participatory excavation, using the language and methods of archaeology to probe how histories are constructed, preserved, and interpreted.  

KT Abadir-Mullally’s Desecration: A Process unfolds in three parts—the Research Phase, Excavation Site, and Artifact Collection—mirroring archeological practice while quietly undoing it. The work includes interactive sculptures, constructed archives, buried ceramics, and large sarcophagus-like forms.. Set against this familiar framework, Abadir-Mullally contrasts the repression of queer histories in the United States with Western Egyptomania, exposing how both displace agency from marginalized populations. 

Paolo Mentasti’s U.S. Steels is a series of welded steel plaques inspired by the Benin Bronzes. Each relief depicts figures caught within fences, commemorating the so-called Remain in Mexico Policy, which forced migrants and asylum seekers to wait indefinitely in unsafe and inhumane conditions while their cases were processed by the U.S. government. Conceived as artifacts-for-the-future, these sculptures act as material witness, asking how present-day systems of violence, displacement, and environmental precarity might one day be understood through their remains.

Together, these works collapse past, present, and future into close relation, reflecting on the production and extraction of material culture while examining how narratives form around historical objects. The exhibition positions the present as a site of future discovery, where contemporary objects become evidence and narrative is never neutral.. Against the violence of extraction, these artists disrupt the familiar cycle of finding and interpreting, insisting instead on material agency and self-narration.

Additional Programming

As an extension of the exhibition, Abadir-Mullally and Mentasti, in collaboration with art historian Moe Marte, will host Back Dirt on Saturday, June 13 from 6–9 PM at an auxiliary site next to the 319 Building. Visitors are invited to dig for newly embedded artifacts and contribute their own objects, leaving traces for future discovery.

Artist and Historian Bios:

KT Abadir-Mullally is an artist and archivist who creates interactive installations and hosts workshops that discuss the movement of information and how much or little control we have over what is remembered or forgotten. Through sculpture and relationship building, Abadir-Mullally’s work debates the fragileness of our modern cultural production, our hunger for legacy, and the desire for ideas and information to die. Her work explores cultural histories, collective thinking, preservation, queer resilience, and strength through fibers and archival records. Abadir-Mullally’s work has been included in exhibitions in Philadelphia, New York, and Los Angeles. Their work has been funded by the Leeway Foundation and the Bartol Foundation. Abadir-Mullally’s artwork has been published in Sinister Wisdom, Dardishi, and Coptic Queer Stories. Abadir-Mullally is a member of Batikh Batikh, an artist collective, pop-up cinema and gallery centering SWANA women, queer and local artists in Philadelphia. She holds a BFA from California Institute of the Arts and a MLIS from Simmons University.

Paolo Mentasti was born and raised on a plane flying between Sao Paulo, Bogota, and Mexico City. Mentasti borrows archaeology as method to create sculptures that record the complexity of contemporary life. Artifacts-to-be, crafted in ceramic and metal, durably document current crises of immigration, environment, and attention. Using traditional and modern techniques, Mentasti cites the past and present, invokes the future, and dresses fictions in the cloak of history. Mentasti has shown work in Philadelphia, New York, Reno, and Italy. His work has been included in Ceramics Monthly, and he has completed residencies at Vermont Studio Center and SOMA+CU in Mexico City. He received his BFA from The Cooper Union in 2020 and his MFA in Sculpture from Tyler School of Art and Architecture at Temple University in 2023. He is currently the Sculpture Technician and an Adjunct Instructor at Tyler School of Art and Architecture. 

Moe Marte is an art handler and art historian based in Philadelphia. Their work combines hands-on experience in the care and movement of artworks with research on cultural memory, ethics, and migration in the Caribbean and the Levant. Their art practice focuses on the preservation of ancestral memory through rhythm and movement, while also exploring how artworks carry ritual, knowledge, and identity—not only as physical objects, but as expressions of social and historical meaning.