Lenore Malen
I am a New York artist and writer. I draw on mythic stories that I interpret through installation, performance and film. My projects are funny and dark. Mark Twain once said that comedy is tragedy plus time. Circe is an archetypal character linked to matriarchal and patriarchal cultures and reviled in the latter. She’s associated with our bodily vulnerability and has power over it. Her power is the comic essence of this film. Circe was shot in Genoa at The Bogliasco Foundation in 2019. Circe recently won prizes at the Toronto International Women’s Art Film Festival, The Berlin International Art Film Festival and Newfilmmakers, NY 2021-2.
Past exhibitions/performances include The Fields at Art Omi; Tufts University; Wesleyan University; Cue Art Foundation; CR10; Studio 10 NY; Art in General; Wave Hill; Hudson Opera House; Film Columbia; Pierogi’s The Boiler; Slought Foundation; Participant Inc.; Printed Matter; Locks Gallery; Skidmore College; Rutgers University; Exit Art; Apex Art; Uppsala Konstmuseum; Brecht Forum; The Finnish Cultural Institutes (with Samir Bhowmik); The BBC (Lion TV); France Fiction, Paris. Projects have been reviewed in BOMB , Art in America, Artforum, Brooklyn Rail, Umbrella, The Village Voice, Art on Paper, New York Times. I’ve attended residences at Yaddo, Blue Mountain Center and The Fine Arts Work Center, Provincetown, Mass. I received a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship and NYSCA and NYFA Grants in 2009.
Susan Silas
I am a visual artist working primarily in digital photography, video, sculpture and post-photographic media. I am interested in the way that historical forces intersect the personal and in how identity is formed. A significant body of my recent 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, in the fragility of sentient being and the potential outcome of human enhancements to the body through new technologies.
My work was recently in exhibitions at Stadgalerie Saarbrücken, in Germany, at Haus N Athen, in Greece and at bitforms gallery, in New York City. My multi-screen video Leda and the Swan premiered at Festival Instants Vidéo Numériques et Poétiques in Marseille, France in 2020. My work has been featured in AntiUtopias, Camera Austria, Fotómúvészet and Artnet Magazine. Reviews have appeared in Artforum, Art in America, the Village Voice, The New Yorker and Hyperallergic. I have been awarded fellowships at Everglades National Park, New Space Arts Foundation in Hue, Vietnam, The MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, VCCA, and the Ucross Foundation. I am a dual Hungarian and American national living and working in Brooklyn, New York.