Astria Suparak

I’ve taken art to non-art spaces, and non-art to art spaces. I’m interested in engaging and bringing together different types of makers and audiences, and combining them to talk about and expand notions of contemporary culture. I endeavor to provide a platform for artists, works, and politics that I believe in.

My work has changed based on the local contexts and communities that I’m in, which have included major cultural centers and small towns and cities that don’t necessarily have a built-in art audience. My earlier curating developed as an extension of my artmaking, which loosely explored poetic ideas and tone, resulting in ephemeral and tightly-packaged emotional experiences. In my most recent post at a university and research institution my curating and programming were conceptually and aesthetically diverse, covering topics such as urban planning, culture jamming, science and technology, economics and labor, experimental geography, immigration, health and design, sustainability, collaborative working, feminisms, and sports fan culture. AS

Biography

Astria Suparak has curated exhibitions, screenings, and live music events and performances for art spaces, film festivals, and academic venues internationally, including PS1, The Kitchen, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Eyebeam, Museo Rufino Tamayo, Internationale Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen, The Liverpool Biennial 2004, and Exposition Chicago 2014 as well as for non-art spaces such as roller-skating rinks, elementary schools, sports bars, rock clubs, and ferry boats.

Suparak was director of the Pratt Institute Film Series (1997-2000) and Syracuse University’s Warehouse Gallery (2006-2007). As the director and curator of the Miller Gallery at Carnegie Mellon University (2008-2014) she curated Keep It Slick: Infiltrating Capitalism with The Yes Men, the first solo exhibition of the internationally renowned culture-jamming group; Whatever It Takes: Steelers Fan Collections, Rituals, and Obsessions, which explored sports fanaticism as a significant form of cultural production; and Alien She, on the lasting impact of the global punk feminist movement Riot Grrrl, among other exhibitions.

 

Recent exhibitions

2013-2016	-ALIEN SHE, Curated by Astria Suparak + Ceci Moss (Yerba Buena Center for the Arts), group exhibition, touring in United-States: Miller Gallery, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh; Vox Populi, Philadelphia; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco; Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach; Pacific Northwest College of Art: Feldman Gallery & Museum of Contemporary Craft, Portland, OR
2011	-The Pittsburgh Biennial, group exhibition
2010	-Whatever it Takes: Steelers Fan Collections, Rituals, and Obsessions, exposition collective, co-curated with Jon Rubin, Miller Gallery, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh
2008	-Keep it Slick: Infiltrating Capitalism with The Yes Men, Miller Gallery, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh