Patricia Clark

Patricia Clark is an interdisciplinary artist and educator working in video, interactive media installations and performance, digital prints, and experimental documentary. She received her MFA from Arizona State University’s School of Art in intermedia with a focus on video art and interactive installation in 1992. Working individually, and in collaboration with other artists and scholars, she explores content areas that lie within the cultural, social, and economic identities of the United States, Latin America and the Caribbean. In her work, Clark presents multiple windows through which evolving global, national, ethnic and cultural identity are presented in non-linear portraits of people, place and time. Her individual and collaborative works have been exhibited at the Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal, Quebec, Canada; URSA in Santa Fe, NM, the Whitney Museum of American Art, NYC, The VIII and XI Cuban Bienals, Havana, The Gebert Contemporary Gallery, Scottsdale, AZ, and the Centro Cultural Banco do Brazil.

After 11 years as a media artist and academic professional for the ASU Institute for Studies in the Arts, an arts and technology research institute, and the School of Arts, Media, and Engineering graduate program, Clark joined the faculty of the New College in the Division of Humanities, Arts and Cultural Studies teaching primarily in the interdisciplinary arts and performance program at ASU where she has been able to focus on her solo work, continue her collaborative projects,and teach students late 20th and 21st century art forms, research and practice. Her most recent solo works focus on the island nation of Cuba and within the United States. These works, and others that are in pre-production and production, will form a larger body of work entitled "Cuba A Través De Mi Ventana," a collection of video art, experimental documentary, interactive installation, and archival printed works. The completed works are:

* El Malecon, created in 2012, is a seven channel installation that challenges the notion that change occurs slowly or not at all on the island. Using the renown seawall avenue that serves as the front door to Havana as the visual metaphor, the issue of time passing and present time is accomplished through imagery of the storied avenue captured over 14 years in photo and video documentation.

• Monumento/monumental, created 2009-2011, is a six channel installation that comments on our choices to whom and what we build monuments to and what we consider monumental in both US and Cuban societies.

• Los Trabajadores, created in 2007, is a three-channel piece that comments on the repetitive nature of labor. 

• Vida en La Osha Comenzo, 2007, is a ten minute three channel video art installation that presents the iconography, ritual and community of the Cuban Lucumi religion.

• Trabajo Voluntario, 2006, isa six-channel video art installation that examines Cuba’s changing labor and economic institutions. 

• Cada dia en mis sueños, a video art work that provides the viewpoint of an outsider looking into the world that is Cuba.  

• This Place Meant, is a single channel video that examines displacement in the United States with regard to complacency, nationalism, symbolism, and the media.  

A significant focus of her collaborative work is found in projects such as The Colectiva with artist Luis Gómez of the University of Arts in Havana, Cuba, and ASU School of Humanities, Arts, and Cultural Studies artist and professor Barry Moon. The Colectiva was formed to produce an an interactive installation, ALT CTRL, which was shown in ArtSpace West in 2012 and featured in the Open Score Exhibition of the 11th Annual Havana Bienal. Clark was also artist collaborator in the installation, Where is Luis Gomez? by Luis Gomez at the Mattress Factory, Pittsburg, PA (November 2004 to April 2005).

Another collaboration project that was critical to Clark's work was La Edad de Oro, a three-channel video collaboration with José Angel Toirac and Meira Marrero Diaz of Havana, Cuba. This work was included in The American Effect exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City, 2003, at the Alucin-Arte Exhibition of the Toronto Latino Film Festival in November 2003, featured in the exhibition by the Ludwig Fundacíon during the Havana Bienal VIII, Havana, Cuba, and in the Expo Arte de Cuba exhibition in the Centro Cultural Banco do Brazil, (Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Brasilia) in 2006. La Edad de Oro is in the permanent collections of the Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal, Quebec, Canada, and the Arizona State University Art Museum.   

A project in 2015 with José Angel Toirac and Meira Marrero Diaz, both of Cuba, took the form of an interactive installation that maps significant points of contact between the United States and Cuba throughout history and up to contemporary times. Its working title is “ I Have A Dream: What We Have In Common.”  

Other collaborative projects include Rosca Izquierda by Cuban artist José Angel Toirac in collaboration with Gene Cooper and Patricia Clark; First World Order by Phillip Mallory Jones; Mirrors & Smoke by Philip Mallory Jones, Ralph Lemon and Katherine Milton; El Salvador: Art Under Duressand Contemporary Art From Cuba: Irony and Survival on the Utopian Island, both exhibitions by curator Marilyn Zeitlin, in which Clark served as media artist, editor (El Salvador project videos), and collaborator for the video documentary on contemporary Cuban artists, also entitled "Contemporary Art From Cuba: Irony and Survival on the Utopian Island."

Clark has collaborated for the past several years with Cuban composer Marlon Gongora Gonzalez who has written and performed original compositions for her video works. His compositions and recordings will become part of the larger exhibition project Cuba A Traves De Mi Ventana. 

Clark has also collaborated as media artist in performance works such as HEEL and A Certain Release by Jeff McMahon, and IMUR by Lance Gharavi. She has designed and/or produced media for performances such as Riga by Lanford Wilson with Marshall Mason, director; VooDoo Dreams by Jewell Parker Rhodes with Charles Mees, director; Falling to Earth by Ellen Bromberg and Douglas Rosenberg; and Chaing Kai Chek with William Aikens, director; among others. Clark is a member of a collaborative group that has produced an interactive mediated installation on the short plays of Samuel Beckett entitled "The Beckett Project" (October 2003).

Clark became an assistant professor of media arts for the interdisciplinary arts and performance program at ASU in 2003 and was promoted to tenured associate professor in 2009. She is represented by the Gebert Contemporary Gallery in Scottsdale, Arizona, and in Santa Fe, New Mexico.