Michael Takeo Magruder is a visual artist who works with new media including real-time data, digital archives, immersive environments, mobile devices and virtual worlds. His practice explores concepts ranging from media criticism and aesthetic journalism to digital formalism and computational aesthetics, deploying Information Age technologies and systems to examine our networked, media-rich world.
In the last 20 years, Michael’s projects have been showcased in over 280 exhibitions in 35 countries, and his art has been supported by numerous institutions within the UK, US and EU. In 2010, he represented the UK at Manifesta 8: the European Biennial of Contemporary Art and several of his most well-known digital artworks were added to the Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art. As a Leverhulme Trust artist-in-residence, Michael produced De/coding the Apocalypse (2014); a solo exhibition exploring contemporary creative visions based on the Book of Revelation. The following year, he was awarded the 2015 Immersive Environments Lumen Prize for his VR installation A New Jerusalem. More recently, he has developed projects reflecting on migration issues surrounding the Syrian Civil War (Lamentation for the Forsaken, 2016) and the US southern border crisis (Zero Tolerance, 2018). At present, Michael is artist-in-residence at the British Library, researching digital map archives and the One Million Images from Scanned Books collection.
Text courtesy Gazelli Art House.

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