Suzanne Treister

Suzanne Treister is a British artist based in London. Initially recognized in the 1980s as a painter, she became a pioneer in the digital/new media/web based field from the beginning of the 1990s, making work about emerging technologies, developing fictional worlds and international collaborative organisations. Utilising various media, including video, the internet, interactive technologies, photography, drawing and watercolour, Treister has evolved a large body of work which engages with eccentric narratives and unconventional bodies of research to reveal structures that bind power, identity and knowledge. An ongoing focus of her work is the relationship between new technologies, society, alternative belief systems and the potential futures of humanity.

Recent solo and group exhibitions include Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt; Yerevan Biennial, Armenia (2020); Istanbul Biennial, Turkey; Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden (2019); Busan Biennale, Korea; CAPC, Bordeaux, France; EKKM, Tallinn, Estonia; CCCB, Barcelona; ZKM, Karlsruhe, Germany (2018); IMMA, Dublin; Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin; Tenderpixel, London; Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Canada (2017), among others.

Treister was awarded the 2018 Collide International Residency Award doing a residency at CERN in the same year. As part of this Award, Treister developed The Holographic Universe Theory of Art History (THUTOAH). This work investigates the holographic principle and the theory that our universe could be understood as a vast and complex hologram, and hypothesises that, beyond acknowledged art historical contexts and imperatives, artists may have also been unconsciously attempting to describe the holographic nature of the universe.

THUTOAH has been exhibited in Broken Symmetries, an international touring exhibition resulted from the 3-year partnership between FACT Liverpool and Arts at CERN. It has been shown at FACT, Liverpool (2018); CCCB, Barcelona (2018) ; iMAL, Brussels (2020); National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, Taichung (2020); Kumu, Tallinn (2020-2021); Le Lieu Unique, Nantes (2021).