Project Space Residency

Peggy Ahwesh’s practice in experimental film and video is an inquiry into feminism, cultural identity and genre. Her work engages political and social topicality, handled with theoretical rigor, while at the same time using humor and mistakes in an open embrace of the inexplicable.  A true bricoleur, her tools include narrative and documentary styles, improvisation & scripted dialogue, found footage & appropriation, digital animation and Pixelvision video. With keen attentiveness to the materiality of bodies and media technologies alike, her works articulate a strong commitment to the marginal and the minor. Her concerns with sexuality, subjectivity, and troubling the boundary between the animate and inanimate have remained constant across the decades, even as she rejects the classic notion of style as authorial signature. Ahwesh remains inspired by her formative experiences in Pittsburgh, where she worked for horror director George Romero and as the film programmer at the Pittsburgh Filmmakers.

Peggy Ahwesh is a Brooklyn based artist who has contributed to the media arts and arts education since the 1970’s. Selected exhibitions include: Vision Machines, Spike Island, Bristol (2021) traveled to Kunsthall Stavanger, Norway (2022); the third body, BFI, London (2013); Heart_Land, JOAN, Los Angeles (2020) and Laugh My Darling, Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao, Spain (2009).  Recent screenings:  OR119 a musical about Wilhelm Reich, AFA/NYC; Art of the Motor, Yebisu Festival/Tokyo; Unsettled States, Baruch College/NYC. Ahwesh taught media studies at Bard College and al-Quds Bard College, Palestine. Ahwesh is represented by Microscope Gallery, New York.

VSW Project Space Residencies are supported by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the New York State Legislature, Monroe County, and Joy of Giving Something.