EFA STUDIO PROGRAM: Member Artists
Susan Silas
Lunchtime Studio Visit with Susan Silas
I am a visual artist working primarily in sculpture, video and photography. I am interested in the way that historical forces intersect the personal and in how identity is formed. A significant body of my work, using my body as the exemplar, is an exploration of our understanding of selfhood and how new technologies are affecting that understanding. My work examines the meaning of embodiment at a moment when artificial intelligence, Whole Brain Emulation and External Wombs are entering the realm of the possible. I am interested in the aging body, gender roles, and the fragility of sentient being. I have been thinking a great deal about how we have come to treat our environment and ourselves so badly in the present. My most recent works are constructed of hybrid forms that incorporate the remains of animals into my own body; a way of thinking our materiality and our inter- dependence at a time when women are losing their rights and more and more animals face extinction.
I have a survey exhibition opening at the University of Kentucky Art Museum in August, and I have had recent solo exhibitions at Koli Art in Istanbul, Turkey, at Studio 10 in Bushwick, New York and at CB1 Gallery in Los Angeles. My work was recently included in exhibitions at Stadgalerie Saarbrücken, in Germany, at Haus N Athen, in Greece and at bitforms gallery, in New York. I was invited by Leverhulme Center for the Future of Intelligence to speak at their recent conference, Digital (Im)mortality: Philosophy, Ethics and Design at University of Cam- bridge and by Horasis USA to participate in their Shaping America’s Role in a Post-Pandemic World conference on a panel titled Reimagining the Contemporary. My work has been featured in AntiUtopias, Camera Austria, Fotómúvészet, Artnet magazine and Hyperallergic. I am a dual American and Hungarian citizen.
