On View: July 2–12, 2026
Hours: Wednesday–Sunday, 12–6PM

Opening Reception: Thursday, July 2, 6–9PM
with live performance

NO SLEEP/NO PICNIC brings together work by queercrip artists Halo Starling and Libby Paloma in a two-person exhibition at Human Resources Gallery, Los Angeles. The show pairs Starling’s textile installation NO SLEEP (2026) with Paloma’s soft-sculptural installation NO PICNIC (2023), two works that refuse the idea that surviving difficulty should be invisible, dignified, or done alone.

Starling’s NO SLEEP (2026) draws on their experience of Severe Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA), chronic nightmares, and Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (C-PTSD). Starling’s ensuing years-long sleep debt required five months of convalescence in their bed. The work takes the form of a sleep temple: the bedsheets from Starling’s recovery hang like temple walls, adorned with pillow-shaped votives. The votives — silkscreened onto hand-woven linen, the material of ancient Greek bedding — reference the stone offerings of affected body parts that Ancient Greek supplicants would bring to these temples. Viewers encounter vertical bed sheets that cannot be slept on, mirroring the struggles of living with a sleep disorder. Private convalescence becomes sacred architecture; befriending sleep becomes a ritual. 

Paloma’s NO PICNIC (2023) is an 18-foot-long soft-sculptural installation that transforms idiomatic expressions into an absurd, meticulous picnic scene. Living with a connective tissue disorder and autoimmune illness, Paloma draws on her background in Speech-Language Pathology to materialize phrases like “bigger fish to fry,” “the whole enchilada,” “in a pickle,” and “when life gives you lemons” as soft sculptures in fabric, vinyl, polyfill, and felt — a metallic rainbow fish, a frying pan, a lemonade pitcher sweating vinyl ice cubes, lace enchiladas. The installation enacts what Paloma calls “world softening”: the practice of imagining a softer world, while also considering who has the privilege to luxuriate in public spaces, and what life circumstances might prompt someone to express these phrases.

Taken together, the NO SLEEP/NO PICNIC diptych is a meditation on the near-constant state of queercrip survival, encountering and resisting barriers to access, and the resulting body trauma, all day and all night. NO SLEEP was created as a response to NO PICNIC, meditating on the embrace and challenges of a “world-softening” bedtime for traumatized crips. NO PICNIC is about seeking softness in the daytime in public; NO SLEEP is about struggling with softness in the nighttime in private. Together the works ask what it costs to keep going, and what forms of care make it possible.

Halo Starling (he/they, b. Perth, Australia) is a Los Angeles–based artist, filmmaker, and writer whose work explores dreaming, trans and queer countercultures, crip futurity, and the transformative potential of altered states. Drawing from archives, ritual, and speculative worldbuilding, they create poetic forms that blur the boundaries between memory, myth, and collective imagination. Their debut solo show, Fairy Prince (2025), was exhibited at ONE Archives at the USC Libraries. Starling earned their MFA in Film and Media Arts from Temple University, and is a Ph.D. student in Media Arts + Practice at USC School of Cinematic Arts.

Libby Paloma (she/they, b. Santa Ana, CA) is a New York-based interdisciplinary artist working across sculpture, installation, and performance. Embracing maximal aesthetics, humor, and craft traditions, Paloma transforms familiar materials into representational forms imbued with layered meaning. Immersive and labor-intensive, Paloma’s soft sculptures draw on craft practices and traditional sewing techniques passed down by the women in her Mexican and Chicana lineage. Through the conceptual framework of “world-softening,” Paloma explores intersectional identity and the radical potential of softness. Paloma earned a Master of Science in Communicative Disorders from San Francisco State University and a Master of Fine Arts from Parsons School of Design at The New School.