Claire Pentecost


Claire Pentecost is an American artist, a writer, and Professor in the Department of Photography at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois. Her interdisciplinary practice interrogates the imaginative and institutional structures that organize divisions of knowledge, often focusing on nature and artificiality. Her work positions artistic practice as a research practice, advocating for the role of the amateur in the collection, interpretation, and mobilization of information. Her current projects focus on industrial and bioengineered agriculture, and the hidden costs of the global corporate food system. Pentecost engages diverse strategies—collaboration, research, teaching, field work, writing, lecturing, drawing, installation and photography—in an ongoing interrogation of the institutional structures that order knowledge. According to her model, the artist is someone who consents to learn in public, interrogating knowledge itself in the cultural space of art, a place where values are contested. She promotes crossing and disturbing the disciplinary boundaries that traditionally limit the authorized specialist.

Collaboration

Pentecost often engages in collaborations with groups and individuals including Critical Art Ensemble, Beatriz da Costa, 16Beaver, Compass, Continental Drift, and Brian Holmes. In the early 1990s, Pentecost was one of a core group of organizers of Four Walls in Brooklyn.

Career

Pentecost's artwork has been exhibited nationally and internationally including dOCUMENTA, Kassel, Germany. Invitations to speak include a Keynote Lecture at "Revolutions in Practice 2," the 2010 Creative Time Summit. Her artwork is represented by Higher Pictures, New York.

Education

Pentecost attended The Westminster Schools, a Christian, independent day school for boys and girls in Atlanta, GA. In 1978 she earned a BA at Smith College, Northampton, MA.
In 1983 she attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. In 1988 she earned an MFA, Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY. Pentecost was selected for the Whitney Independent Study Program 1988-89.

Art Works