Catherine Sullivan has created film, theater, and installation work nationally and internationally. The performers in her works are often coping with written texts, stylistic economies, re-enactments of historic performances, gestural and choreographic regimes, and conceptual orthodoxies. Her true medium is the ensemble itself.
Solo exhibitions, collaborations, performances and films have been presented at venues such as UCLA Armand Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; The Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Metro Pictures, New York; Galerie Catherine Bastide, Brussels, Galerie Christian Nagel, Cologne; Secession, Vienna; Tate Modern, London; Opéra de Lyon, Lyon; Volksbühne, Berlin; Cricoteka, Krakow; Trapdoor Theatre, Chicago; the Whitney, Moscow and Gwangju biennials; Berlin International Film Festival and International Film Festival Rotterdam. Her work is held in public and private collections including Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Tate Modern, London; Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, Vienna; Rubell Family Foundation, Miami and Geotz Collection, Munich. Notable awards include The Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation, Herb Alpert Award in the Arts, Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst, United States Artists Walker Fellowship and a Chicago Dancemaker’s Forum Lab Artist Award. She holds a BFA in acting from California Institute of the Arts and an MFA in post-studio art from Art Center College of Design. She is an associate professor in the Department of Visual Arts at the University of Chicago.