Online Exhibition of New Artworks for Sale by Susan Scafati, titled \”retract♦️refract\”, in conjunction with Austin Studio Tour. Follow Instagram @susanscafati & www.susanscafati.net for updates.

In these archival pigment prints, Scafati plays with light refractions as a metaphor to reflect on the politics and poetics of refracting history, destabilizing archetypes, and confronting stereotypes of a culture in flux. She uses camera lag to contemplate cultural lag, a term coined by William Fielding Ogburn which focuses on the lag between material — the technology, the infrastructure, the physical things— and the immaterial culture — the rituals, the rules, the institutions.”

Susan Scafati is an American conceptual artist who explores the ways in which individual versus collective identities and personal versus cultural mythologies are constructed. She explores the iconography and materiality that contribute to the way meaning is organized and its impact on human experience. Scafati works across multiple mediums. She is known for large-scale art installations, and her artwork has been exhibited in museums and galleries. Recent major commissions include a 111-foot installation featured at the Texas Cultural Trust’s Texas Medal of Arts Awards; a 4-story installation featured at the Facebook office; and a 2-story installation in the Austin Central Library windows.

Exhibitions include Unframed First Look at Sean Kelly Gallery, NY (curated by Cindy Sherman, Adam Fuss, and Jack Pierce); The Photo Review at Sol Mednick Gallery, PA (curated by Museum of Modern Art/MOMA Curator Sarah Meister); t e x t s c a p e at Co-Lab Projects’ DEMO Gallery; and as the Modern Voice Artist for Goya: Mad Reason at The Blanton Museum of Art (curated by Douglas Cushing). Group exhibitions with collective Lakes Were Rivers include Strange Pilgrims at The Contemporary Austin and Contemporary Photographic Practice and the Archive at the Harry Ransom Center.

This project is supported in part by the Cultural Arts Division of the City of Austin Economic Development Department, sponsored by Big Medium, and presented during the 2020 Austin Studio Tour. This exhibition is free and open to the public.