Catherine Sullivan

Catherine Sullivan was born in Los Angeles, California, in 1968. She received a BFA from the California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, in 1992, and an MFA from the Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, in 1997. She lives and works in Chicago. Her practice encompasses film, video, installation, and live performance, and investigates the ways in which gestures, movements, and emotional states are constructed, rehearsed, and performed. Sullivan’s works often bring together live performance and filmmaking, directing actors through highly structured sequences in which apparently spontaneous or erratic movements are carefully choreographed. Her performers move abruptly between different gestures, behaviours, and emotional states according to elaborate systems of rehearsal and repetition. Through this process, Sullivan examines the relationship between learned and seemingly instinctive behaviour, as well as the ways in which the body can communicate and acquire meaning through performance. Her films and performances frequently draw on popular cinema, theatre, ritual, and other forms of cultural representation. References to classic Hollywood filmmaking, film noir, vaudeville, modern dance, and period performance styles are combined with contemporary environments, including corporate and institutional spaces. Rather than developing conventional narratives, Sullivan uses these references to foreground the mechanisms of performance itself and to expose the codes through which behaviour is presented and interpreted. The relationship between the actor and the role is central to Sullivan’s practice. In works such as *Five Economies (big hunt, little hunt)* (2002), performers move through multiple roles and stylistic registers, revealing how identity can be continuously constructed and transformed through performance. Her working process involves extensive rehearsal while allowing choreographed elements to be recombined in different configurations, creating a tension between control and variation. Sullivan has presented her work internationally, including at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Tate Modern in London, the Vienna Secession, Kunsthalle Zürich, the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, the UCLA Hammer Museum, and the Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago. She has also participated in the Whitney Biennial, the Prague Biennial, and the Biennale d’Art Contemporain de Lyon. In 2004, Sullivan received the CalArts Alpert Award in the Arts and a DAAD Fellowship, which she held from 2004 to 2005. Her work has been presented in both exhibition and screening contexts, including film and video programmes as well as major institutional exhibitions. Through the combination of choreography, acting, filmmaking, and installation, Sullivan creates works in which behaviour becomes a material in its own right. Her carefully constructed performances expose the conventions through which gestures and emotions are organised, while her use of cinematic and theatrical references continually shifts attention between character, performer, image, and the structures that determine how each is perceived.