Selected Recent Words
Susan Scafati's "if a tree falls"
Sightlines
Reviewed by Mary K. Cantrell
April 25, 2019
Touching on themes of technology and interconnectedness, Scafati’s plexiglass structures and prints find a home in an urban space...
“I think that aesthetically, and psychologically, that influence of seeing cities construct and destruct plays into these installations,” says Scafati. “To have [the installation] in these windows where it’s overlooking downtown — the cityscape that I was looking at when this imagery originated — feels powerful to me.”
Photo by Cody Bjornson
Susan Scafati, "t e x t s c a p e", FB Artist in Residence Commission, 2017
By June Zandona
Facebook
2017
Susan’s installation from her body of work titled “ t e x t s c a p e “ is a meditation on constructed worlds, communication and connection through the gesture of text messaging. For this iteration, she invited the FB Austin community to co-create the work, resulting in phrases added to the textbox forms in 11 different languages. Watch this video to see how the interplay between the installation, diverse individuals and the cityscape invites viewers to think about the ways in which everyday forms influence individual and collective behavior.
Photo by Anna Mazurek
"textscape: Susan Scafati and Sean Ripple"
The Austin Chronicle
Reviewed by Sam Anderson-Ramos
Feb. 24, 2017
Using text interface as a visual environment, this show is messy and clean, consistent and surprising, philosophical and entertaining. Susan Scafati and Sean Ripple's "textscape" treats the ubiquitous text interface as a visual environment. The intangible is made tangible, something we can touch, not only with our fingers, but with our bodies. Scafati's Scroll is a massive piece placed near the ceiling and spanning two walls. It buckles in places, protruding in colorful humps, at times mimicking the perforations in a strip of film, at others a jumbled skyline. In fact, the piece is overflowing with subtle echoes of the rectangular speech bubbles I recognize from my iPhone screen. Monolith is perhaps the most dramatic. It is a massive wooden speech bubble coupled with audio of a droning male voice and some jarring music. The wood itself is left untreated, industrial, a different kind of technology.
Seeing the Bull in Red: A Conversation with Susan Scafati about Art and Bullfighting
(Modern Voice Artist for Goya: Mad Reason exhibition)
The Blanton Museum
July 25, 2016
If you’ve visited the Blanton’s latest exhibition Goya: Mad Reason, you might have heard audio recordings scattered around the galleries that juxtapose modern reflections on themes in the exhibition with words by Goya and his contemporaries. One of these recordings feature both the words and work of Susan Scafati, an Austin-based American contemporary artist. Exhibition curator Douglas Cushing sat down with Scafati to discuss her work and the visual culture of bullfighting, both in Goya’s time and today.
Strange Pilgrims
(with Lakes Were Rivers)
2016
Strange Pilgrims exhibition at The Contemporary Austin museum is accompanied by a 250-page, full-color, hardbound catalogue with an essay by exhibition curator Heather Pesanti; a scholarly essay by University of Texas at Austin Art History Professor Ann Reynolds; a conversation between philosopher Alva Noë and writer and critic Lawrence Weschler; and original artist’s contributions by Trisha Baga and Jessie Stead, Roger Hiorns, and Lakes Were Rivers. The catalogue also includes 500-word texts, short biographies, and full-color plates for each artist on view that provide additional creative and critical context for the exhibition. The exhibition catalogue for Strange Pilgrims will be published September 2015 and is packaged and distributed by University of Texas Press.
Windows of Opportunity: Interview with Susan Scafati
Harry Ransom Center Magazine
Fall 2017
We are pleased to share our interview with Ransom Center member Susan Scafati, an Austin-based, American contemporary artist. She is a member of Lakes Were Rivers, an artist collective showcased in the Ransom Center’s 2013 exhibition Contemporary Photographic Practice and the Archive.
OPEN FORM: Facebook Artists in Residence 2012–2017
2017
Open Form: Facebook Artists in Residence 2012-2017 marks the fifth anniversary of the founding of Facebook’s Artist in Residency Program (FB AIR), and features images of 225 site-specific art installations completed by artists at Facebook offices around the world since 2012. The book also includes introductions by Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg and FB AIR founder and director Drew Bennett, as well as a long-form essay by scholar and curator Natasha Boas that traces the evolution of Bay Area counterculture and cyberculture and examines the intersections between tech and art and the creative minds working in both fields.