Image: © Sue Murad, Derek Bok Center, Harvard University, 2022. Photo courtesy of the artist.
b. 1974, USA
www.suemurad.com
Sue Murad is a Boston-based artist working in performance, installation, sculpture, collage, and film. Her exploratory practice centers around an intuitive, physical study of her surroundings, disregarding notions of usefulness, common meaning, and prescribed narratives. Select awards and invitations include a Massachusetts Cultural Council fellow in Choreography; a year-long performance residency awarded through the U.S National Parks Service; a collaborative film project for the ICA Boston’s First Fridays; performing at the 7a 11d* International Festival of Performance Art (Toronto); and a film screening at the Krafta Doc International Artmaking Film Festival (Glasgow). Long term collaborations include partnering with Reciprocity Collaborative on projects at the Museum of Fine Arts, Jacob’s Pillow, Old North Church, and four years performing as a member of the pop-synth band, U.V Protection. Sue was born in New Hampshire and graduated with a BFA in Sculpture from the Massachusetts College of Art & Design. Whenever possible, she looks for opportunities to travel.
Sue Murad responds to culture through an intuitive, sensory engagement with everyday objects, often in the public or private places they inhabit. Through a combination of attention, study, and play, she may alter, arrange, and choreograph a subject, or set up situations where change and chance happen without direct contact, such as a subject melting, falling, or sliding. She is drawn to both semblance and difference, and the strange and surreal synthesis that can occur with comparison and contrast. Disregarding notions of usefulness, common meaning, and prescribed narratives, these formal and philosophical explorations feed her interdisciplinary practice of performance, installation, sculpture, collage, and film.