EFA STUDIO PROGRAM: Member Artists

Susan Silas

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Lunchtime Studio Visit with Susan Silas

My overall project for the past thirty years has been the exploration of embodiment. My principal medium has been photography, however, that medium has expanded through digital technologies to include motion capture video and sculpture. Inspired by my experiences making a video with a Peregrine Falcon and a Mute Swan, in recent works, I have looked more closely at the relationship between and interdependence of humans (and specifically female bodies) and animals by conjoining my body with animal remains.

My book, Helmbrechts Walk, 1998–2003, a 312 page softcover book is due out in September of 2026. The work was first presented in the format of an unbound book, accompanied by a slide presentation. In that form the work was exhibited in the United States and in Europe in the early aughts. Helmbrechts Walk is a memorial testament to the forced march of 580 female Jewish prisoners during the closing days of the World War II. This work is a visual representation of the 225-mile route from Helmbrechts, a small satellite camp of the Flossenbürg concentration camp, into the occupied portion of Czechoslovakia, then known as the Sudetenland. On the 53rd anniversary of the march, I set out on foot to retrace the path of these women—walking for 22 days in Germany and the Czech Republic.

A book of collected images shot over the course of twenty years, titled love in the ruins; sex over 50, that depict me with my husband and which includes an interview with me by the feminist scholar Amelia Jones, and a previously published review in Hyperallergic by Thomas Micchelli, is near completion.

I had a recent solo show of sculpture at Catskill Art Space, a survey exhibition at the University of Kentucky Art Museum, and a recent solo exhibition at Koli Art Space in Istanbul, at Studio 10 in Bushwick, New York and at CB1 Gallery in Los Angeles. My work was 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 Centre for the Future of Intelligence to speak at their recent conference, Digital (Im)mortality: Philosophy, Ethics and Design at the University of Cambridge 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.

(sculpture photo credit: Brad Farwell, photo credit: “Leda and the Swan” Jimi Billingsley.)