Susan Seubert's fine art photography is on display, this month, at the prestigious Venice Biennale. The Biennale has, for over a century, been one of the most important cultural institutions in the world. CNN said "These shows -- taking over everything from pavilions, palazzos and churches to public squares and former factories -- dynamically alter their surroundings, while making potent statements about today's world and what it means to be an artist." It's an incredible honor for Susan's work to be included and we're all thrilled for her.
About the exhibit...
GAA Foundation at the European Cultural Center has selected Portland photographer Susan Seubert for inclusion in “Personal Structures”, an exhibition on view at Palazzo Bembo, Venice, Italy, in concert with this year's Venice Biennale. Seubert will exhibit a recent body of work titled, "Not a Day Goes By: Asphyxiation Series." These photographic prints on metal surfaces meditate on a highly prevalent means of suicide in the United States: Self-asphyxiation using a plastic bag. All the more harrowing for their ordinariness and ready availability, Seubert placed plastic over the heads of her models (whom she crowdsourced via social media) and relied on each individual's instinctual posture to convey a face-on personal aspect to broader, tragic statistics. The results are ghostly, simply composed, eerily beautiful in their veiled view of the people underneath whose features are blurred, creased, partially obscured by the folds and light-glancing planes of the bag. Printed on reflective metal panels, Seubert invites the viewer to consider, through glimpses of their own face in the picture, our common humanness. She also draws parallels between these individual tragedies and the role of plastic in environmental ruination – the great Pacific Garbage Patch and other examples remind us that the Earth, in a very real way, is suffocating in plastic.
An active fine art and photojournalist, exacting in her preparation and printing, she is a master of new and old techniques. Her provocative imagery has earned her critical acclaim with inclusion in Portland2012, a Biennial of Contemporary Art and in the Portland Art Museum's 1999 and 2001 Biennials. She was a finalist for the Contemporary Northwest Art Awards and received Gold in the category of Travel Magazine Photo Essay by the North American Travel Journalists Association. Her work is included in public and private collections including Microsoft Corporation; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX; Portland Art Museum; Oregon Health Sciences University; Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, University of Oregon; the City of Seattle, WA; and the Tacoma Art Museum, WA. She holds a BFA in Photography from the Pacific Northwest College of Art, Portland, OR, 1992.
