Contents
Biography, Contact information, News
Archive, Sunsets, Notes From Underground, Waves, 2012-2015
Texts, Reviews, Published projects
Biography
Curriculum vitae, PDF (76 KB)
Lisa Tan traces the contours of life as it is shaped by desire and determined by the contingent encounters that form it. To do this, she draws from an array of disparate associations: properties of certain natural phenomena, biographical details of one or two literary figures, violent encounters that recall others, and many more mobilizing triggers. Her process is initiated by an intuitive sense for how a situation or question that is personal in nature, when imbued with feeling, develops into a conversation on subjectivity and its relation to language, its impact on society, and its resonance in a world of others. Her work takes the form of installation, photography, video, and writing, among other gestures. Marked by material and conceptual precision, it considers the frame and conditions in which it appears and meets an audience in a manner that often engenders the work itself with its physical features and content.
Lisa Tan lives in Stockholm, Sweden. She is Professor of Art at Konstfack University of Arts, Crafts and Design. Born in Syracuse, Upstate New York, Tan was raised in El Paso, Texas, where her family settled. Tan received an MFA from the University of Southern California (USC), Los Angeles, where she lived for several years before moving to New York. In 2012, she relocated to Sweden to undertake a practice-based PhD at HDK-Valand at the University of Gothenburg.
Her work has been presented in solo and group exhibitions at institutions such as Moderna Museet (Stockholm), Kunstinstituut Melly (formerly known as Witte de With) (Rotterdam), MIT List Center (Cambridge), Kunsthall Trondheim, Whitechapel Gallery (London), ICA Philadelphia, Kadist Art Foundation (Paris), Tabakalera International Center for Contemporary Culture (San Sebastian), Contemporary Art Gallery CAG (Vancouver), Artists Space (New York), ICA Philadelphia, Accelerator (Stockholm). Tan’s work was presented in the 11th Göteborg International Biennial of Contemporary Art (GIBCA) (2021), osloBIENNALEN First Edition (2019-2020), ever elusive, Transmediale festival, Haus der Kulturen der Welt (2017), Why Not Ask Again?, the 11th Shanghai Biennale (2016), Surround Audience, the Triennial exhibition at the New Museum (2015). Her work is in the collections of Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Malmö Konstmuseum, the City of Oslo’s public art collection, Coleção Moraes-Barbosa, São Paulo, and Artium the Museum of Contemporary Art of the Basque Country, Vitoria-Gasteiz.
Sunsets, Notes From Underground, and Waves, an artist book on Lisa Tan’s series of videos from 2012-2015, is published by and available at Archive Books, Berlin. It was designed and edited by Joshua Shaddock, and features texts by Mara Lee, Lauren O’Neill-Butler, Natascha Sadr Haghighian, and Lisa Tan.
Lisa Tan: Dodge and/or Burn, available from Mousse Publishing, was conceived as a continuation of the artist’s eponymous solo exhibition at Accelerator, Stockholm (2023-2024). It includes texts by psychoanalyst Charlotta Björklind, artist Asier Mendizabal, writer Haytham el-Wardany, Accelerator’s exhibition curator Therese Kellner and artistic director Richard Julin. Throughout the book runs a transcription of the voice-over monologue from Tan’s video Dodge and Burn.
For full-length viewing copies of Lisa Tan's videos please email the studio address below.
Contact information
Lisa Tan Studio
117 66 Stockholm, Sweden
+46 70 883 57 95
Arbins gate 7
0253 Oslo, Norway
+47 22 94 40 40
Filmform
Svarvargatan 2
112 49 Stockholm, Sweden
distributes a selection of videos by Lisa Tan
News
Lisa Tan joins as visiting faculty in the MFA program at Bard College, summer 2024.
Reading Lewis Hyde, debuts in The Way of the Water, Tangente St. Pölten, curators Joanna Warsza and Lorena Moreno Vera, May 1, 2024.
Mousse Publishing and Accelerator, launch Lisa Tan: Dodge and/or Burn with a conversation between artist Lisa Tan and writer and curator of ArkDes, James Taylor-Foster, on 8 February 2024
Performance and book release at Marabouparken for the exhibition herein between spaces, with Lisa Tan and My Lindh, January 20, 2024.
Hello Brain You've Been on my Mind! A conversation between artist Lisa Tan and Håkan Fischer, Professor in human biological psychology, Accelerator in Stockholm, 29 November 2023
Malmö Konsthall, Artist talk with Lisa Tan: The role of failure, presented by Skånes Konstförening, Oct 28, 2023
Lisa Tan selected for the Amant, Studio & Research Residency Siena, Italy, 2023.
Solo exhibition, Dodge and/or Burn, opens at Accelerator on September 16, 2023 (closes February 11, 2024).