Emma Rozanski: Specimens of Chance and Play
Artist in Residence Capstone Exhibition

November 2, 2018 – December 2, 2018

Opening Reception: Friday, November 2, 2018. Free and open to the public, Registration Required.

Specimens of Chance and Play is an exhibition of video art, mixed-media installation and text-based art by filmmaker Emma Rozanski. As the current Artist in Residence at the International Museum of Surgical Science, Rozanski has been using the Museum’s unique collection of historical objects and spaces to create a diverse range of work. Seven new pieces inspired by surgical science combine different materials, techniques and performance practices for altered perspectives on texture and form utilization. Playful undertones of lateral thinking reveal a love for absurdism that also challenges traditional methods and platforms for moving image. These artworks have been formed with specific spaces inside the Museum in mind in order to complement some of the exhibition themes; not to be set apart in an isolated gallery space, but to become a part of the entirety of the Museum.

The exhibition includes a dance-based collaborative video piece filmed and projected in the Hall of the Immortals, an abstract animation inspired by x-rays, a metaphysical video eye-test, a cinematic soundscape of medical implements, multi-media and text-based installations and a moving-image landscape of surgical tools and shadow-puppetry.

About the Artist: Emma Rozanski is a British-Australian filmmaker, multimedia artist and a first-generation MFA graduate of Béla Tarr’s film.factory experiment in Sarajevo. Her debut feature-length film, PAPAGAJKA (The Parrot) had its World Premiere at the SXSW Film Festival in 2016 and continued on to a successful festival run worldwide. Emma’s moving image works have collectively have been selected for over 150 festivals and exhibitions worldwide and won several awards. She is an alumnus of the Berlinale Talents, the Berlinale Short Film Station and the Reykjavík Talent Lab. Emma is part of the artist collective, Bistrik7 (@Bistrik7), a group of 20 filmmaker-artists from around the globe who make collective projects and curate screenings and exhibitions of their work. Currently, Emma is developing her next two narrative feature films, along with an ambitious long-form video art piece.

The IMSS Artist Residency Program provides artists with extended and in-depth access to artifacts from its collection, working space within the Museum, and support to present exhibitions that introduce additional perspectives to the institutional depiction of medical history. As artistic practice occupies an increasingly pluralistic field, The International Museum of Surgical Science believes that artists are uniquely equipped to extrapolate on Museum collections in innovative ways. Artists in Residence present a capstone exhibition at the end of their residency. This program is partially supported by a grant from the Illinois Arts Council Agency.