How Open AI’s image generating system DALL-E 2 sees me:

Praba Pilar is a diasporic Colombian artist and scholar disrupting the ‘cult of the techno-logic’ through live performances, video and digital works, electronic installations, and writing. Her projects have traveled widely to museums, galleries, universities, performance festivals, conferences, public streets, political meetings, bookstores, bars, and radio airwaves around the world - including San Francisco's Museum of Modern Art; BAN 5 at Center for the Arts at Yerba Buena; the Oakland Museum of California, the Museum of World Culture in Gothenberg, Sweden; el Museo Universitario Arte Contemporaneo in Mexico City; the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles; the San Francisco Art Institute; Grace Performance Space in New York City; La Facultad de Bellas Artes, Altea, Spain; Toronto's McLuhan Center for Culture and Technology; Vancouver's LIVE BIENNALE; the Zero One Festival at ISEA; SIGGRAPH in South Korea; the Ontario College of Art and Design in Toronto; Galeria Studio Cerrillo in San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico and many more; outside the Empire State Building in New York City during a week long residence at CUNY Graduate Center; and in numerous conferences around the world including those of the Society for Literature, Science, & the Arts; the Taboo, Transgression and Transcendence in Art & Science; the College Art Association; and as a work group leader of the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics in the Americas Encuentros in Mexico City, Santiago, Chile, and Montreal, Canada.

Pilar is the recipient of numerous awards, which include the 2025-27 HUMAN (Humanities Understanding of the Machine Assisted Nexus) Fellowship and Residency of Ragdale and Lake Forest College; a 2024 TTT Feral BioArt Residency in Crete, Greece; a 2022 Memes as Social Practice Residency at UC Santa Cruz; a 2021 Cultura Power Fellowship of MACLA/Movimiento de Arte y Cultura Latino Americana; a 2020 Community Rapid Response Award of Headlands Center for the Arts, and in 2019 include the City of Emeryville Community Grants Program, the Local Impact Award of the California Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts. Past awards include a Post-Doctoral Fellowship in Digital Humanities and New Media with the Hub for Innovative Exchange at the University of Winnipeg, the UC Davis Presidential Pre-Doctoral Fellowship, the Puffin Foundation Award, the Creative Work Fund Award, the Potrero Nuevo Fund Award and two nominations for a Rockefeller Award.  Her most recent writing has been featured in Performance, Religion and Spirituality; ROAR; Feminist & Scholar Online; Lateral Journal of the Cultural Studies Association, Women's Eco Artists Dialogue; Dance Current, KATALOG, localflux, and h+Magazine. She has co-written and solo authored book chapters dating back to 2001. Her work has been written about in journals and books, and she was featured in a book on inspirational women by Cathleen Rountree, On Women Turning Thirty: Making Choices, Finding Meaning (2000).

Pilar has a PhD in Performance Studies, with designated emphases in Studies in Performance Practice as Research and in Feminist Theory and Research from the University of California, Davis; a Bachelor of Arts in Intermedia Arts from Mills College; studied Max/MSP/Jitter with Bob Ostertag at UC Davis; took workshops in RFID tag creation (Zapped!) with Beatriz de Costa, Jamie Schulte and Brooke Singer; basic robots creation with Elise Baldwin; and workshops at Video Pool in Winnipeg in electronic circuitry, Arduino and PureData programming with artists Ken Gregory and Andy Rudolph; DIY technology design with artist Andrew Milne; and Wet Lab biotech practices with Niki Sperou.

She began her art studies with two foundational years of drawing classes at the Art Student’s League of New York, followed by intermittent studies at the San Francisco Art Institute in Sculpture and New Genres. In a much earlier chapter of life, she studied economics, political science and development for three years at New York University. Some of the artists and scholars she has worked with include Erika Hannes, John Jota Leanos, Rene Garcia, La Pocha Nostra, Alex Wilson, Adam Zaretsky, Charlotte Sáenz, Cecilia Vilca, Larry Bogad, Joe Dumit, Peter Kulchisky, Ben Simmons, Freya Olafson, Mia S. van Leeuwen, Theo Pelmus, Luna, Lyndsay Ladobruk, Martin Franco and various photographers and videographers who have helped document her work. She is immeasurably helped by Janet Sarson on numerous aspects of her practices.

Pilar Co-Directs the Bioarts Ethical Advisory Kommission, is very active in the Legal, Ethical, Societal and Libidinal implications (LESLi) aesthetic oversite approval committee of the World Congress on New Reproductive Technology Arts; Co-Directs the Hindsight Institute, and collaborates extensively on one time events. Pilar is an adjunct professor in the Critical Studies Department at the California College of the Arts. Recent CV available upon request.

 
 

REFLECTIONS ON MY WORK CAN BE FOUND IN:

Books:

Other:

  • “The Paradox of Evolution - Yes, I am Obsolete Human Being,“ by Paz Torneo. ISEA 2012 Proceedings. Albuquerque: Machine Wilderness, ISEA, 2012.

  • “Techno-Heroines. Transhuman resistances. The example of Praba Pilar.” by Paz Tornero. Feminist Agency and Empowerment in Visual Arts Symposium. Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, MADRID, Spain. 2011.

  • Paradigm Shifts:  Walter McBean Galleries Exhibitions and Public Programs, San Francisco Art Institute 2006-2011.  Hou Hanru with Mary Ellyn Johnson.  San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco, 2011

  • Bay Area NOW 5 Wayfinder.  Catalogue of Bay Area Now 5 exhibition at Center for the Arts at Yerba Buena, 2008

Recent Media:

 

:: at the MULTISPECIES SALON :: at VUCAVU  :: interview at the Off Center Salon :: Salon Magazine article about Los Cybrids antics in Year 2000 ::