Claire Pentecost


Claire Pentecost is an American artist, a writer, and Professor in the Department of Photography at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois. Her interdisciplinary practice interrogates the imaginative and institutional structures that organize divisions of knowledge, often focusing on nature and artificiality. Her work positions artistic practice as a research practice, advocating for the role of the amateur in the collection, interpretation, and mobilization of information. Her current projects focus on industrial and bioengineered agriculture, and the hidden costs of the global corporate food system.
Pentecost engages diverse strategies—collaboration, research, teaching, field work, writing, lecturing, drawing, installation and photography—in an ongoing interrogation of the institutional structures that order knowledge. According to her model, the artist is someone who consents to learn in public, interrogating knowledge itself in the cultural space of art, a place where values are contested. She promotes crossing and disturbing the disciplinary boundaries that traditionally limit the authorized specialist.
WWW Official Site

Collaboration

Pentecost often engages in collaborations with groups and individuals including Critical Art Ensemble, Beatriz da Costa, 16Beaver, Compass, Continental Drift, and Brian Holmes. In the early 1990s, Pentecost was one of a core group of organizers of Four Walls in Brooklyn.

Career

Pentecost's artwork has been exhibited nationally and internationally including dOCUMENTA, Kassel, Germany. Invitations to speak include a Keynote Lecture at "Revolutions in Practice 2," the 2010 Creative Time Summit. Her artwork is represented by Higher Pictures, New York.

Education

Pentecost attended The Westminster Schools, a Christian, independent day school for boys and girls in Atlanta, GA. In 1978 she earned a BA at Smith College, Northampton, MA.
In 1983 she attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. In 1988 she earned an MFA, Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY. Pentecost was selected for the Whitney Independent Study Program 1988-89.

Art works

  • soil-erg
  • victoryland
  • the dream
  • expochacra
  • plastic dreamhouse by the sea
  • ''grub''

Exhibitions (selections)

Awards

Speaking engagements

Authored texts

  • Undoing property?; edited by Marysia Lewandowska, and Laurel Ptak; published Sternberg Press; 2013.
  • Notes from the Underground: 100 Notes, 100 Thoughts: Documenta Series 061, Documenta ; published Hatje Cantz; Bilingual edition; 2012.
  • Deep routes: the midwest in all directions; published Compass Collaborators; 2012.
  • Critical Strategies in Art and Media: Perspectives of New Cultural Practices; Konrad Becker, Jim Fleming ; with: Ted Byfield/Nettime, Steve Kurtz/ Critical Art Ensemble, Amanda McDonald Crowley/Eyebeam Art and Technology Center, Claire Pentecost/Continental Drift, Peter Lamborn Wilson/Temporary Autonomous Zone; published Autonomedia, NY; 2010.
  • "The Politics of Perception," with Brian Holmes, catalog essay, published 11th International Istanbul Biennial, Istanbul, Turkey; 2009.
  • "Field of Zombies," essay published for the exhibition agriArt, Fine Arts Gallery at George Mason University; 2009.
  • Talking With Your Mouth Full: New language for socially engaged art: essays by Lori Waxman, Claire Pentecost & Carrie Lambert-Beatty; edited by Elizabeth Chodos; published Green Lantern; 2008.
  • Tactical biopolitics: art, activism, and technoscience; edited by Beatriz da Costa and Kavita Philip; with a foreword by Joseph Dumit; published MIT Press, 2008.
  • "When Art Becomes Life: Artist-Researchers and Biotechnology," Transversal, Multilingual Web Journal, European Institute for Progressive Cultural Policies; 2007.
  • Participatory Autonomy; edited by Rebecca Sullivan; with foreword by Hannah Higgins; published UIC School of Art and Design; 2006.
  • "Reflections on the Case by the U.S. Justice Department against Steve Kurtz and Robert Ferrell;" published Marching Plague, Autonomedia Press; 2006
  • "Of Patriots and Profits: New Tools for Keeping Academic Research in Line;" with Beatriz DaCosta; published Radical History Review; 2005
  • Catalogue essay, "Proof, the Act of Seeing With One's Own Eyes;" published Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Melbourne; 2005
  • "What Did You Eat and When Did You Know It?" published Art Journal, Fall Issue; 2002
  • Researched, wrote & designed "Al'queria, History, Present, Vision," published Avina Group, Mallorca, Sp; 1997
  • Review of the new Museum of the American Indian, World Art, Fall 1995
  • "Four Walls: Ten Years," Documents, Spring Issue 1994
  • Catalogue essay: "What Charlie Troutman Said," The Mayfair Show, The Mayfair Club in coordination with American Fine Art, New York, NY 1993

Published images

  • Blindspot, Issue 43; 2011.
  • Useful pictures, edited by Adelheid Mers; published Whitewalls; 2008.
  • American Girl Place, published Domain Errors, Autonomedia, New York, NY; 2002.

Interviews