Catherine Sullivan

Trained as an actor and visual artist, Catherine Sullivan began publicly presenting film, theater and installation works in the early 2000’s. Her work combines an interest in the psychic and cultural dilemmas inherent in dramatic acting and the ways history can be projected through the body. Using written texts, gestural and choreographic regimes, stylistic economies and conceptual orthodoxies the performers and collaborators in her work animate questions of self-possession and redress in locations charged with unique social meaning.

Sullivan’s solo exhibitions, collaborations, performances, and films have been presented at Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; The Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Secession, Vienna; Tate Modern, London; Opéra de Lyon; Trapdoor Theatre, Chicago; Metro Pictures, New York and Galerie Catherine Bastide, Brussels among others. She has participated in the Whitney, Moscow, and Gwangju biennials; Berlin International Film Festival; International Film Festival Rotterdam; and BFI London International Film Festival. Awards include the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation, Herb Alpert Award in the Arts, the United States Artists Walker Fellowship and Chicago Dancemakers Forum Lab Artist Award. She is an associate professor in the Department of Visual Arts at the University of Chicago.