Carla Gannis

Carla Gannis is a New York-based artist fascinated by digital semiotics and the situation of identity in the blurring contexts of physical and virtual. She received an MFA in painting from Boston University, and is faculty and the assistant chairperson of The Department of Digital Arts at Pratt Institute. Upon her arrival to New York in the 1990s, Gannis began incorporating digital elements into her painting-based practice. Since then she has eclectically explored the domains of “Internet Gothic,” cutting and pasting from the threads of networked communication, googleable art history, and speculative fiction to produce dark and often humorous explorations of the human condition.

Gannis’s work has appeared in numerous exhibitions and screenings, nationally and internationally. Recent screenings, commissions and solo exhibitions include “Portraits in Landscape” Midnight Moment, Times Square Arts, NY; “Sunrise/Sunset” Whitney Museum of Art, NY; “Until the End of the World,” DAM Gallery, Berlin; “A Subject Self-Defined,” TRANSFER Gallery, Brooklyn; and “The Garden of Emoji Delights,” Hudson River Museum, Yonkers. Gannis’s work has been featured in press and publications including, ARTnews, The Creators Project, Wired, FastCo, Hyperallergic, Art F City, The Wall Street  Journal, The New York Times and The LA Times, amongst others. She has participated in numerous panels and workshops regarding intersections in art and technology, including “Let’s Get Digital,” (2014) and “Artists’ Choice” (2016) both at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

In 2015 Gannis’s speculative fiction writing was included in DEVOURING THE GREEN:: fear of a human planet: a cyborg / eco poetry anthology, published by Jaded Ibis Press, and her augmented reality artist book The Selfie Drawings was awarded the Founder's Award from the 2016 Lumen Prize. Gannis is represented by Transfer Gallery, New York, and DAM Gallery, Berlin.

Upon Emergent Occasions

Using 21st Century representational technologies, Brooklyn-based artist Carla Gannis tells stories through a “digital looking glass”, where reflections on power, sexuality, marginalization, and agency emerge. She is fascinated by digital semiotics and the situation of identity in the blurring contexts of the real and the virtual.