Claudia O’Steen is an interdisciplinary artist whose work combines sculpture, video, installation, writing, & performance. Through her research-based practice, she examines shifting landscapes via navigation, exploration, perception, & failure. She creates languages to convey distance, scale, & direction, giving evidence to a process that has taken place & creates landscapes supplemented by scientific curiosity & human memory.
O’Steen resides in South Carolina & is an Associate Professor of Fine Arts at Winthrop University. She received a BFA from Watkins College of Art & an MFA in Digital+Media at Rhode Island School of Design. She has exhibited both nationally & internationally at venues such as The Russian State Arctic and Antarctic Museum, Maajaam Estonia, apexart, Flux Factory, Ohio State University, Manifest Creative Research Gallery, & Atlanta Contemporary amongst others, & has been awarded residencies across the globe at Rabbit Island, Hambidge Center, Wassaic Project, Montalvo, The Arctic Circle, & The National Centre for Contemporary Art St. Petersburg, Russia.
O'Steen's work points to a never-ending process, a series of attempts to measure an infinite line, to chart the color of the sky, to capture the single point where a shift occurs in a limitless expanse. She uses sculpture as a tool for observation and perception by creating instruments and devices that capture and translate transitional moments, returning information distorted, amplified, and transformed. Using these devices, she attempts to orient herself by examining place via the lens of personal experience and primary observation, often selecting points that are ultimately impossible to calibrate against. Failure, error, and disorientation are all important means to understanding her circuitous process of discovery.
In addition to her individual studio practice, O’Steen is a member of the artist collective Tiger Strikes Asteroid - Greenville.
