USA Projects

Catherine Sullivan creates hybrid performance and video works that often take the form of multichannel installations. She came to art from an acting background, and her works focus on actors and their gestures within lush productions with densely layered scores. Working from a well-rehearsed script, the actors perform in highly stylized ways that seem to express attitudes and emotions rather than character. Unsettling and disorienting, her works cross disciplines and borrow from such varied sources as vaudeville, modern dance, musical theater, and historical drama.

Portrait photo courtesy Catherine Sullivan

Performance view, Audimax/Neustadt Manifestation, 2005 (in collaboration with Ron Athey, Marek Chihucki, Sean Griffin, Mike Kelley, Vera Maeder, and Stacy Ellen Rich), Volksbühne, Berlin, Germany; Audimax, Aachen, Germany; photo courtesy Marcus Lieberniz