Shoufay Derz is a Sydney based artist of both German and Taiwanese ancestry. Through the mediums of photography, sculpture and video installation her recent artwork is a personal reflection on death and the meaning of emptiness.
Read MoreIntensely process-driven, elemental and alchemical, her recent work harnesses the life-cycle of silk moths, glass and pure indigo pigment. Derz explores how absence is articulated through marks of presence and how the visual artist uses the known to depict the unknown just as the writer uses words to express the ineffable. Her elegiac photographs and videos are both a lament on the transience of life and a celebration of its mystery.
Depart without return was acquired by the Art Gallery of South Australia and featured in the 2014 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art: Dark Heart curated by Nick Mitzevich. She has been the recipient of numerous awards, residencies and grants including two Australia Council grants. In 2003 she won the prestigious 52nd Blake Prize for Religious Art for her mysterious and abstract photographic series Linking back. She has exhibited her works widely, both throughout Australia and abroad, held solo exhibitions at Artereal Gallery, Sydney; Delmar gallery, Sydney and Gallery 4a, Asia-Australia Arts Centre, Sydney. Her work has been included in major group exhibitions at The Museum of Modern Art (shanghai), OCTA Museum of Contemporary Art (Shenzhen) and The Esplanade (Singapore).
