American artist Sula Bermúdez-Silverman's multi-media works unravel hidden narratives surrounding race, gender, sexuality and nationality.
Read MoreUsing a multitude of materials that range from the organic to synthetic, Bermúdez-Silverman creates evocative sculptures that invite viewers into a world of odd curiosities. Primarily a sculptor, Bermúdez-Silverman also works in video and assemblage.
Sula Bermúdez-Silverman was born in 1993 in New York, USA.
In 2013, she moved to London and enrolled at Central Saint Martin's School of Art and Design. Two years later, she returned to the U.S. to complete a BA in Studio Art at Bard College in New York. In 2018, she received her MFA in Sculpture from the Yale School of Art in Connecticut.
Bermúdez-Silverman is Black Puerto Rican and Jewish. Her practice revolves around the intersectional aspects of identity and the in-between space that people of mixed heritage backgrounds, such as herself, occupy. She uses quotidian items as stand-in identifiers of people and often employs domestic objects to reference the home.
Bermúdez-Silverman cites American artists Adrian Piper and Bill Traylor as significant influences in her practice. Outsider art, specifically quilt making, is another source of inspiration in her body of work.
In an interview with Ocula Advisory, Bermúdez-Silverman discussed the different roles she adopts as an artist. 'I consider myself a collector, but not so much a preservationist or archivist because I'm not so good at taking care of objects. I've learned from using ephemeral materials that relinquishing control is the best thing to do if you don't want to get frustrated.'
Bermúdez-Silverman often uses her own hair in her work. She considers hair to be a huge part of her life because it exists as a signifier for the way people view her in the world. Looking at her hair, people recognise that she is Black, which determines how she is identified and therefore perceived. Without it, she exists in an in-between space where people struggle to place her identity.
In 2013, she began making embroideries using her hair as a thread for her found lace doilies (2014–17) series. In her works 3C / 4A (2017) and Table for Eleggua, Table for Elijah (2018), Bermúdez-Silverman incorporates hair by featuring objects like a drop spindle wrapped in hair or by using yarn made from her hair.
Table for Eleggua, Table for Elijah (2018) is an installation Bermúdez-Silverman made using a circular table with castor wheels that allow the work to be split into two halves, creating a pathway visitors can physically walk through. The table contains an amalgam of found and made objects that are associated with Judaism and Santería, religions practiced by Bermúdez-Silverman's grandmothers. Objects featured include clay dominos, yarn made out of her own hair, a hair pick and a Lazy Kate.
Bermúdez-Silverman's installation also features three videos displayed on tablets, including the video Duck Test (2018) which presents controversial activist known for identifying as a transracial Black woman, Rachel Dolezal, installing faux locks into Bermúdez-Silverman's hair.
Table for Eleggua, Table for Elijah (2018) explores a slippage in identification. The idea behind the work stems from America's fraught history of racial and ethnic taxonomies and introduces societal debates surrounding cultural appropriation, property, performed identity, authenticity and essentialism.
Neither Fish, Flesh, nor Fowl (2020) was Bermúdez-Silverman's first solo museum exhibition at the California African American Museum (CAAM) in Los Angeles. The exhibition featured work the artist made between 2014 and 2020 and included several sculptures made from sugar and resin.
Bermúdez-Silverman began using sugar in her work as a way to understand the history of the sugar trade, while unpacking the narratives surrounding her ancestors who worked on sugarcane plantations in Puerto Rico.
For the display at CAAM, Bermúdez-Silverman made sculptures moulded from her childhood dollhouse. The sugar and resin mixture lends a transparent and translucent quality to the work that feels at once ethereal and uncanny. Embedded in the sugary surface of the walls and floors are a series of small personal objects. Bermúdez-Silverman's suspension of trinkets and material connection to her ancestral history makes these powerful works distinctly personal.
Sula Bermúdez-Silverman's work is featured in the public collections of galleries and institutions. Selected collections include the California African American Museum in Los Angeles; the Institute of Contemporary Art in Miami; and the Young Museum in San Francisco.
Sula Bermúdez-Silverman has been the subject of both solo and group exhibitions.
Solo exhibitions include: Sula Bermúdez-Silverman, Josh Lilley, London (2023) (forthcoming); Ichthyocentaur, Matthew Brown, Los Angeles (2023); Here Be Dragons, Friends Indeed, San Francisco (2022); Sighs and Leers and Crocodile Tears, Murmurs, Los Angeles (2021); Neither Fish, Flesh, nor Fowl, California African American Art Museum, Los Angeles (2020).
Group exhibitions include: Something or Other, Galerie Maria Bernheim, Zurich (2023); Fabric of a Nation: American Quilt Stories, Skirball Cultural Center, Los Angeles (2022–23); Imago Ignota, Fortnight Institute, New York (2022); Contramundos, Lodos, Mexico City (2021); Enfolding Bloom, Galerie Dengyun, Shanghai (2021); Baker's Dozen, Torrance Art Museum, Torrance (2020).
Bermúdez-Silverman's website can be found here and her Instagram can be found here.
Phoebe Bradford | Ocula | 2023
