BIOGRAPHY
Shelley Cook-Contreras is an internationally exhibited artist whose work in performance, installation, and video art offers unique life-art perspectives. Evolving from her interest in Somatics and Ecopsychology, she examines the psychosomatics of our society and environment. Her recent video/performance, Water Prayer (2021), was part of Mexico’s Festival Virtual Itsï, a large-scale project to reverse ecological damage to Lake Cuitzeo. In her working philosophy, she states, “I seek to create art that enlivens with communication and awareness. I think of artworks as "activators" to ignite a questioning of our culture and conditioning.”
Her past projects have been awarded by the National Endowments for the Arts, Arizona State University’s Institute for Studies in the Arts, the National Institute of Fine Arts, INBA, in Mexico, the National Fund for the Arts and Culture, FONCA; with the Rockefeller Foundation, and The California Arts Council. She has created projects for El Chopo Museum, in Mexico City, SOMARTS, and The Lab in San Francisco. Cook-Contreras was featured artist in the 10th International Performance Festival held in Mexico City, at Ex-Teresa Arte Actual, exhibiting a work about the people and power structures of Chiapas entitled Observations: Seeing In-Between. Her performance work, The Red Thread, was presented at SF Museum of Modern Art. Her film works have been included in the Worldwide Video Festival; den Haag, Holland, and Festival Espace Lyonnais D'Art Contemporain; Lyon, France.
After earning her MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute's New Genres Department, Shelley taught New Media, Performance, and Sculpture as a member of the Spatial Arts Faculty of San Jose State University. She has presented workshops and lectures in the US, Mexico, and abroad at such venues as Mexico's El Chopo Museum, The San Francisco Art Institute; the Worldwide Video Festival, Holland; and NYU's Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics. She has developed bilingual art pieces, which have been exhibited both in Mexico, Europe, and the United States.
Activators and Social Sculptures
The process of working in collaboration with community and environment is a guiding force in her methods. She states, “Through the tactics of a cultural worker, I explore the landscape of our human experience, particularly the border between personal desire and societal restriction. In these collaborative investigations, which I call Social Sculptures, place and time are catalysts to the work. I film visual and textual information from people and the environment. Their life stories, and everyday language of common expressions is translated into the physical structures and actions of the artwork, focusing on issues of personal, political, and spiritual evolution. In this way, I offer up these works as “activators” of communication and awareness.”
“My works range from complex, large-scale installations, to simple, body-based performances. I use everyday objects, and elemental materials, related to the project, such as earth, food, and pigment, combined with the dynamic elements of sound, moving image, and performance. I select materials based on their power to stimulate memories and associations, which may be unique to each person, but that, resonate a broader social significance. Projected video and sound, utilizing layered text and documentary footage, create an architecture of information that shapes and directs the performance.”