I was raised in rural Appalachian western Maryland. My childhood was one of secluded observation of the natural world: marking the changes in the forest and sky, regularly asking the animist spirits of the land for world peace and to help me make friends. While the second request did eventually come true, collectively we have been the subjects of a growing epidemic of isolation and social alienation. As an art educator I've mentored teenagers who struggle with loneliness, and as an organizer for abolition efforts and teacher unions I've helped build coalitions when well-funded forces have aggressively sown divisiveness, sold under the guise of individuation. These experiences are related and especially relevant now as our current body politic consists of people being forcibly removed from their families and communities are fractured and denied agency of their own corporeality, while commercial predation continues to harvest our attention as we hustle just to get by. This alienation and violence echoes through our bodies and minds.
In response to these mechanisms of manipulation, my art practice facilitates an alternative attention to our surroundings and each other by proposing different modes of relation. I aim to interrupt isolation and find meaning by making the familiar strange. By using banal experiences as reference points – folding chairs, a sandwich bag, plastic straws – I rearrange our shared physical reality in unexpected, sometimes humorous ways. Meaning and connection can be felt through moments of poetic synchronicity, and invisible phenomena are made perceptible, even palpable: the loud sound of the absence of people, an animated spotlight shining on soil taken from a remote ICE detention center. I aim to reveal resonance and significance that is obscured by systems that dehumanize and separate. By proposing inventive ways to engage with our surroundings and each other, I hope to disrupt divisive patterns and invite social and emotional integration.
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Gwyneth has presented work nationally and abroad, including at Roman Susan, Weinberg/Newton Gallery, the Chicago Cultural Center, Roots & Culture, and the Hyde Park Art Center in Chicago; MoMA PS1 Print Shop in New York; Peephole Cinema in San Francisco; St. Charles Projects in Baltimore; and the Freies Museum in Berlin. They've been an artist-in-residence at the Experimental Sound Studio (Chicago), the Institute for Electronic Arts (New York), Utopiana (Switzerland), and FRISE (Germany), among others. Gwyneth's work is included in collections at FRISE and the Institute of Contemporary Art Library in Baltimore, and their projects have been written about in Newcity, the Chicago Reader, and Teen Vogue. They were trained in Pauline Oliveros' Deep Listening program, were an organizer with the Chicago abolitionist collective Make Yourself Useful, and has worked as a teaching artist for Chicago Public School students for the past 14 years. They are currently a Sculpture MFA candidate at the Tyler School of Art and Architecture in Philadelphia.
Interviews and press:
Embodiment in Art Practice by Michaela Chan, AMA Journal of Ethics, June 2025
Interview with Tate Shaw on Mouth Sounds, WAYO community radio, June 2024
Interview with Dan Manion on Inside the Edition, Chicago Printmakers Guild podcast, April 2022
Interview with Nance Klehm on Lumpen Radio, October 2021
Return to the Everywhere at Weinberg/Newton Gallery, Chicago Artist Writers, March 2020
Survey for White Artists, Monday Journal, April 2020
Bill Meyer reviews Chyme, Dusted Magazine, March 2019
Interview with Stacia Yeapanis for OtherPeoplesPixels, December 2014
Laughing Video recommendation, Chicago Magazine, November 2011
Laughing Video still, TimeOut Chicago, November 2011
(Photo by Formidable Entities)
