SHOSHANA FINK
Artist Bio:
Shoshana Fink grew up in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She studied classical violin for 17 years and completed two years of study at Manhattan School of Music. She also has a B.A. with honors in anthropology from the University of Chicago and a B.F.A. in media arts from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. Shoshana has over 15 years of experience as a Los Angeles-based film producer and director. During her time in Southern California, she worked on six feature-length documentaries and narratives. In addition to numerous international screenings, two films she produced, An Injury to One and Who Killed Cock Robin, went to the Sundance Film Festival. From 2012 to 2015 she also worked at Participant Media under Academy-Award- nominated executive producer, Diane Weyerman. In 2016, she left Los Angeles, and after a few years living in Montana, she returned to the Twin Cities in 2018. In 2022, Shoshana graduated with an M.F.A. in Visual Studies from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design with a focus on photography, video, sound, olfaction, and installation. She has served as a teaching artist in residence at the Masonic Institute for the Developing Brain at the University of Minnesota, and as an Art Lecturer at the University of Wisconsin River Falls, and adjunct faculty in Media Arts at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. In 2021, she attended Mildred’s Lane residency program in Beach Lake, Pennsylvania. In January of 2024, she was an artist in residence at the NES Artist Residency in Skagaströnd, Iceland, where she exhibited her work as part of Light Up 2024. Shoshana joined Form + Content Gallery as a member artist in 2024.
Artist Statement:
I am an inter-disciplinary artist focusing on photography, video, sound, olfaction, and installation, whose work is situated at the intersection of visual culture, technology, biology, and ecology. My practice critically reflects on the relationship between living organisms and their environment. It is the goal of my work to explore stories of sympoiesis, or “making-with,” both in human and other-than-human systems. In this context, I utilize multiple mediums and sensorial landscapes to highlight networks of interdependence and to emphasize the exigency of finding new ways of living together.
My installation piece, Sylvan Essence, is an example of the current direction of my practice. This piece is an interactive installation exploring the visual, auditory, and aromatic language of the Hoh Rainforest, a temperate rainforest situated on the ancestral lands of the Hoh and Quileute Tribes. Using image, sound, and scent from the Hoh, Sylvan Essence employs photography, sculpture, sound, and olfactory elements, the viewer sees images of the forest, smells the fragrance of the moss and the trees, and hears sounds of the Hoh. They can walk around and move inside a tree-like photo-sculpture, a moss-covered tree trunk on the outside, root structures and the smell of damp earth on the inside. Situated here, the viewer can look up at the tree canopy and find a place to rest on a mycelial stool. They can also listen to the resonant, deep, rumble of the tree roots, a unique underground language recorded from a giant mother tree. As a human being ensconced in this reconstructed forest cosmos, the viewer has an opportunity to imagine “becoming-with” a multi-species ecosystem that is equitable, synergistic, and regenerative.
Please Look Don’t Touch, is another example of recent practice. This is a photo-sculptural series which explores how human beings interact with digital technology, trading physical contact and proximity for looking and displaying. Using the display case as a “stage” on which individuals “reenact” their digitally mediated world, this project features a custom-built plexiglass box placed in various public settings like parks and city streets. These mobile and temporary site-specific installations, which are documented photographically, invite both subjects and audience into a multi-layered visual dialogue. Like reflections on the surface of the case itself, interactions with this sculptural intermediary mirror the way we engage with power in the digital ecosystem - simultaneously connected and disconnected, revealed and concealed, consuming and consumed.
Site specificity and inclusivity drive my practice. Whether they are interior or exterior, I am inspired by places and spaces. They guide the locations I choose, the mediums, form, content, as well as the composition of my work. I also seek to create pieces that are accessible to viewers of diverse abilities and backgrounds. As such, I consider spatial layouts for those with limited mobility and wheelchairs in my installation pieces. I have installed work in public, non-art spaces as well. Recently, I have also employed diverse sensory components - aural, olfactory, and tactile – which can be appreciated by both hearing-impaired and sight-impaired individuals.
