Suzon Fuks: Artist Statement & Bio

As an intrinsically experimental artist I am deeply committed to making & developing art that examines, reflects upon, and helps us survive, today’s disjointed worlds.  Using the live body as a starting point, I focus on process, interaction and diversity, compelled by small human gestures that are shared across cultures and that communicate and reveal the depth and complexity of our human experience. My practice is characterised by a holistic post-humanistic approach that focuses upon magnifying details, synthesizing wholes, collaborating, coordinating, weaving between extremes, playing with contrasts and emphasizing presence and space. My works are made for audiences to interpret, to be provoked by, to view from a range of perspectives and to also directly participate within, as a means for them to be able to reflect upon their own lives and places.

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I approach obsolescence in order to explore the hidden side of things, to discover layers of knowledge amalgamated over time, and to have a better understanding of what seems to escape us in the use of our current tools. All of our electronic devices, although marketed as new and innovative, hold a long history of technological development. My process of dismantling ‘obsolete’ ones to repurpose the components highlights for me these histories.

Seeing these components repurposed makes us aware of the full life cycles of our devices – from design, production, marketing, use, disuse, partial reuse, and waste, to a very slow decomposition, which takes far longer than all the previous processes put together – a ‘galactic’ time scale.

I also wish to raise awareness of the unfair global distribution of these processes, with access to new technologies predominant in developed countries, while workers mining rare earth elements are exploited in developing countries, where much of the electronic waste ends up, again buried in landfill, or alternatively, end up as space junk orbiting the planet.
With the creation of robots, AI and the Internet of Things, some of the ways in which we use our minds and bodies are being replaced. While we are researching and quantifying how human brains function, our senses, perception and creativity are arguably what differentiates us from our machines and makes us unique as humans. We need to delve into the knowledge of our bodies, and our relationships with each other and the natural world. I have the feeling of urgency to address the difference between our tools / technology and our body / senses, to dig inside, to be aware and mindful, to explore the layers.

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Water has fascinated me for many years. Researching networked performance, looking at meshing form and content, I observed that water’s fluidity, stripes and rhythms make links between graphic, choreographic, musical and cinematic forms. I come from a country in Europe where water is often considered a commodity and taken for granted as it rains a lot. For three years in the early 90’s, I lived in a part of India where access to water regulated life. When I moved to Brisbane/Meanjin, Australia, I saw the city going through severe drought for several years and then big floods. These events made me more aware of water issues and the politics around water, and led me to conceive Waterwheel, a project open to all, for cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural dialogues and exchanges around the globe.

Suzon Fuks is an “artivist” whose work bridges art, science and the environment using wearable art, bookmaking, photography, video, interactive technologies, all driven by her movement practices. She focuses on water, position of women, asylum seekers, and impact of technology on humanity and the natural world.

Suzon was born in Brussels, where she trained in dance, theatre and music at Lilian Lambert Academy (69-76) and completed her Masters in Visual Arts at La Cambre (79-84). She has lived in Australia since 1996. She has been Co-Artistic Director of the multi-arts organisation IGNEOUS since its inception in 97 with James Cunningham, her long-term collaborator.

Multi-award-winner, she also received the prestigious Australia Council for the Arts Fellowship and Copeland Fellowship. She initiated and founded the art-science online platform Waterwheel, dedicated to water issues. 1,500 artists, scientists, activists, teachers & youth from 34 countries and 81 locations took part in the project, which is archived since mid-2016. In 2015, she was a facilitator of the 30,000+ visitors to Marina Abramovic’s installation “In Residence” in Sydney. End of 2019, she started ‘Obsolete’, a body of work including artist books, jewellery and performance, reflecting on the impact of technology on humanity & the environment.