USA Projects

Sylvia de Swaan is a Romanian born photographer who has lived in Mexico, Europe and a number of cities in the United States. She works on long term exploratory projects that are informed by a range of themes, including personal history, individual and collective memory and identity; the state of the world and the neighborhood where she lives.

De Swaan has been awarded grants, residencies and fellowships from Art Matters, The Aaron Siskind Foundation, CEC/ArtsLink (X3), Light Work (X2), Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Bemis Center for Contemporary Art; Austrian Ministry of Culture, Constance Saltonstall Foundation, Anderson Ranch Art Center, and a three-time recipient of Photography Fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts.

Sylvia's photographs have been exhibited in numerous venues in the United States and abroad, including Art in General, NYC; Springfield Museum of Art, Springfield, OH; Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute, Utica, NY; New Orleans Museum of Arts; Museo de Artes Plastica, Xalapa, Veracruz; Cankarjev dom, Ljulbljana, Slovenia; Format Festival 2009, Derby, UK; and  Centers for Contemporary Art in Moscow and Yekaterinburg, Russia

Along with her personal practice de Swaan has had a multitude of involvements in the arts – among them, as long-term Executive Director of an international studio program; a visiting instructor at the University of Mexico and Hamilton College; an independent curator; art consultant and panelist for the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts, Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation and many others.

Sylvia is currently working on a twenty-year retrospective entitled "Intersecting Narratives," to open at the Picker Gallery at Colgate University in October 2011.