Artist Statement/ Biography

Grounded in choreographic sensibilities, Phoebe Osborne’s practice folds together material, psychic, and social traces of life through video, sculpture, performance, writing, and sound. Osborne’s personal negotiation of chronic pain has led them to consider systemic stresses and accelerating depletions of life-sustaining environments. Since 2017, Osborne has used the term ‘flaking-out’ to acknowledge the immense failure of languages of culture and nation. They aim to argue for an urgent repositioning of focus away from culture and nation and towards methods of translation and relation. While the topics grappled with are enormous, Osborne intentionally centers a specific quality of intimacy in their work, making art with and for their friends, rather than a disembodied ‘general’ audience. Other people are invited into the work with all the small understandings and nods available to be felt, but not necessarily explained. This intimacy stretches to Osborne’s protagonists, materials, and the expanse of their making.

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Phoebe Osborne is an artist living in Brooklyn, NY. Osborne’s works have been presented across the US and Europe, including commissioned works at Transmediale Berlin, La Caldera Barcelona, SFMoMA, Oakland Museum of California, and Lenfest Center for the Arts. They have exhibited at Bar Laika e-flux (NY), False Flag (NY), Southern Exposure (SF), and Pierogi Gallery (NY). Osborne was a 2017 DanceWEB resident artist at Impulstanz in Vienna, a 2018-21 resident artist at the Hercules Art/Studio Program in Manhattan. They hold an MFA in Visual Arts from Columbia University and an MA in Choreography from DAS Graduate School at the Amsterdam University of Arts. They are a current A.I.R. Gallery Fellow.