Sophie Auger (b. 1994, Quebec) is an artist and designer living in Brooklyn, New York. She works in video installation, sculpture, photography and print and web publication.
She is a lecturer at Rutgers University, where she graduated in 2022 with an MFA in Design. In the past, she taught at The New School, the University of Pennsylvania, Index Space and the School of Visual Arts. She currently designs the Brooklyn Rail.
CV, Design,
CV, Design,
Selected Exhibitions:
If a Token Could Speak, Elektra, Montreal, 2022
Narrowcasting, Mason Gross, New Brunswick, 2022
BOOKED, Helsinki Contemporary Art Center, Finland, 2021
Sophie Auger & Shirin Fahimi, Art.Art, Montreal, 2018
Teaching:
(See teaching portal)
School of Visual Arts, Creative Coding
University of Pennsylvania, Design Senior Seminar
Rutgers University, BFA Thesis & Exhibition, Typography Index Space, Undeletable Image
Parsons School of Design, Core I, Core II, CD Currents
Visiting Critic and Lectures:
Columbia Graduate School of Architecture
Drew University, BFA Digital Media
Rutgers University, MFA Design Studio
Université Laval, Colloque 50e
Mois Multi
Livart Gallery, Montreal
Art Matters & CUJAH
Website last updated in March 2024
Unknown Art Index, Helsinki Contemporary Art Center
Token Provenance, Mason Gross Gallery
Narrowcasting, Mason Gross Gallery
Invocation, SALON: Dark Matter
Radio Exorcism, FOFA Gallery
If a Token Could Speak
ELEKTRA Gallery, Montreal
May 12 - June 18, 2022
The NFT departs from the traditional structure of the exhibition, which is often defined by a future (announcement of the exhibition), a present (opening), and a past (archive). Instead, the work, its archive, and its sale are flattened into a single experience. The NFT serves as an archive, and it is this archive that is sold on blockchain markets. The works in the exhibition 'If a Token Could Speak' question the status of the collectible object.
In the video projection, an NFT celebrates the neoliberal tour de force of the blockchain, allowing any low-quality image, downloaded, shared, and reformatted a hundred times, to gain the same value as a rare work of art. 'Catalog' (2022) is an auction catalog presented in the form of a holographic video. All the elements of the exhibition at ELEKTRA have been registered on the Tezos blockchain as NFTs: the various stages of creation, the animated characters of the video, the press release, and the exhibition documentation have all been given individual value and sold at auction.
Unknown Art Index
MUU Contemporary Art Center: BOOKED Fair
Helsinki, Finland
2022
Unknown Art Index is a project taking the form of a website and a printed publication. The website is a digital archive containing artworks by unknown artists from the public domain collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, ranging from 2381 BC to AD 1990. Each line of text is an entry for an object made by an artist who is labeled as Unknown, and the highlighted entrees are hyperlinks to a cryptographic token of the same object. Using the open access archive made available by the Metropolitan Museum on Github, Unknown Art Index uses blockchain to transfer the ownership of the unnamed art objects from the Museum to an anonymous blockchain entity named UnknownArtist.eth.
The printed publication acts bot as a glossary of blockchain terms and a printed version of the NFT collection. The economic appropriation of the artwork, made possible by the absence of provenance, is a way to speak to the new and ambiguous relationship to authorship held by artists on the blockchain.
Provenance
Mason Gross Gallery, New Brunswick, NJ
May 10 – June 06 2021
In the NFT economy, images are often irrelevant; they serve as substitutes for the transactional context. Paradoxically, NFTs are at the same time cryptographically unique; they are not interchangeable. This paradox, coupled with the intangible nature of a new technology still in the making, feeds the exhibition Provenance, which explores the experience and the status of the NFT in the context of the art world as well as its impact on notions of archiving.
There is a distinction between two types of NFTs; one is a digital-born file, the other is a physical object that has been digitized for archiving purposes. But whether physical or digital, blockchain reroutes objects' provenance; once made token, the NFT is born and its provenance is made digital. The objects in the exhibition are derivatives of their tokenized originals. In this context, the artwork is a derivative of its archive.
Narrowcasting
Mason Gross Gallery, New Brunswick, NJ
October 17 – November 12, 2021
Narrowcasting1 refers to a broadcasting that targets a limited and specific audience, rather than a large number. The exhibition presents a video installation of hacked digital projectors. With the help of the YouTuber FixItFrank, the projectors have been modified to project their inner mecanism. Inside a DLP (Digital Light Processing) projector is a wheel spinning at a high speed to which red, green and blue color chips are attached. These colors compose the projected image; here, the wheel has been slowed down so that it is possible to control the speed of rotation and make each color visible in the projection, one after the other.
The term narrowcasting is used here in literal sense; to cast light through a narrow opening. But to narrocast through the hacked projetors is also an act of disengagement with mass media. Instead of mediating images, the projectors are performative sculptural objects: no video is transmitted, only the light of host screens. In this moment of self-reference, the projector projects itself and technology is slowed down to reach human perception.
1. The term comes from artist and theorist Gregg Bordowitz.
Some Follow-Up Questions (exhibition website)
Curated by Park McArthur & Jason Hirata
Webseth Gallery, New York
June 9 – July 1, 2022
Exhibition website design for Some Follow-Up Questions, a group exhibition of work by Steph Zimmerman, Misra Walker, Bruno Smith, Anoushé Shojae-Chaghorvand, Gabriel Sacco, Katerina Pansera, Ella Kandel, Perri Hofmann, Kyle B. Co., Shamia Gaither, Miranda Friedman, Peggy Chiang, and Stephanie Boyer. Organized by Jen Shear, Nora Normile, Park McArthur, and Jason Hirata, the exhibition’s title comes from a Rutgers University course taught by McArthur and Hirata in the Spring of 2020 that focused on the multitude of roles and people who shape what we think of as conventions for experiencing, distributing, and conserving works of art.
Invocation of Marcel Duchamp
SALON: Dark Matter, Montreal
November 13, 2017
Part of the event SALON: Dark Matter hosted by Concordia University, this participatory performance is both an invocation ritual and an opportunity to encounter those whom we consider our references. Performed in the context of academia, where we usually only experience our references through archives, we offered a way to meet them through this invocation ritual.
The performance lasted 45 minutes and involved asking: 'Marcel, are you there? If you are there, manifest yourself. Marcel, are you there?'. The documentation of the performance shows the séance abruptly ending when a participant spins the bicycle wheel.
Folly Tree Arboretum
2x4 Internship, New York, 2022
As part of an Internship at 2x4 as a graphic designer, I helped designing the visual identity and website for Folly Tree Arboretum, a digital and physical archive of trees situated in the East Hamptons. Designers: Tim Gambell, Danny Well, Paul Hoppe.
Radio Exorcism
FOFA Gallery, with Laura Acosta and Vincent Routhier for Poe Radio, Montreal
July 20 – August 21, 2016
Radio Exorcism is a two-part performance in the vitrine of FOFA Gallery and was part of Laura Acosta's project POE radio: a performance pirate radio broadcast and a space for collaboration, improvisation and social engagement between institutional and public communities.
ELEKTRA Gallery, Montreal
May 12 - June 18, 2022
The NFT departs from the traditional structure of the exhibition, which is often defined by a future (announcement of the exhibition), a present (opening), and a past (archive). Instead, the work, its archive, and its sale are flattened into a single experience. The NFT serves as an archive, and it is this archive that is sold on blockchain markets. The works in the exhibition 'If a Token Could Speak' question the status of the collectible object.
In the video projection, an NFT celebrates the neoliberal tour de force of the blockchain, allowing any low-quality image, downloaded, shared, and reformatted a hundred times, to gain the same value as a rare work of art. 'Catalog' (2022) is an auction catalog presented in the form of a holographic video. All the elements of the exhibition at ELEKTRA have been registered on the Tezos blockchain as NFTs: the various stages of creation, the animated characters of the video, the press release, and the exhibition documentation have all been given individual value and sold at auction.
Unknown Art Index
MUU Contemporary Art Center: BOOKED Fair
Helsinki, Finland
2022
Unknown Art Index is a project taking the form of a website and a printed publication. The website is a digital archive containing artworks by unknown artists from the public domain collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, ranging from 2381 BC to AD 1990. Each line of text is an entry for an object made by an artist who is labeled as Unknown, and the highlighted entrees are hyperlinks to a cryptographic token of the same object. Using the open access archive made available by the Metropolitan Museum on Github, Unknown Art Index uses blockchain to transfer the ownership of the unnamed art objects from the Museum to an anonymous blockchain entity named UnknownArtist.eth.
The printed publication acts bot as a glossary of blockchain terms and a printed version of the NFT collection. The economic appropriation of the artwork, made possible by the absence of provenance, is a way to speak to the new and ambiguous relationship to authorship held by artists on the blockchain.
Provenance
Mason Gross Gallery, New Brunswick, NJ
May 10 – June 06 2021
In the NFT economy, images are often irrelevant; they serve as substitutes for the transactional context. Paradoxically, NFTs are at the same time cryptographically unique; they are not interchangeable. This paradox, coupled with the intangible nature of a new technology still in the making, feeds the exhibition Provenance, which explores the experience and the status of the NFT in the context of the art world as well as its impact on notions of archiving.
There is a distinction between two types of NFTs; one is a digital-born file, the other is a physical object that has been digitized for archiving purposes. But whether physical or digital, blockchain reroutes objects' provenance; once made token, the NFT is born and its provenance is made digital. The objects in the exhibition are derivatives of their tokenized originals. In this context, the artwork is a derivative of its archive.
NarrowcastingMason Gross Gallery, New Brunswick, NJ
October 17 – November 12, 2021
Narrowcasting1 refers to a broadcasting that targets a limited and specific audience, rather than a large number. The exhibition presents a video installation of hacked digital projectors. With the help of the YouTuber FixItFrank, the projectors have been modified to project their inner mecanism. Inside a DLP (Digital Light Processing) projector is a wheel spinning at a high speed to which red, green and blue color chips are attached. These colors compose the projected image; here, the wheel has been slowed down so that it is possible to control the speed of rotation and make each color visible in the projection, one after the other.
The term narrowcasting is used here in literal sense; to cast light through a narrow opening. But to narrocast through the hacked projetors is also an act of disengagement with mass media. Instead of mediating images, the projectors are performative sculptural objects: no video is transmitted, only the light of host screens. In this moment of self-reference, the projector projects itself and technology is slowed down to reach human perception.
1. The term comes from artist and theorist Gregg Bordowitz.
Some Follow-Up Questions (exhibition website)Curated by Park McArthur & Jason Hirata
Webseth Gallery, New York
June 9 – July 1, 2022
Exhibition website design for Some Follow-Up Questions, a group exhibition of work by Steph Zimmerman, Misra Walker, Bruno Smith, Anoushé Shojae-Chaghorvand, Gabriel Sacco, Katerina Pansera, Ella Kandel, Perri Hofmann, Kyle B. Co., Shamia Gaither, Miranda Friedman, Peggy Chiang, and Stephanie Boyer. Organized by Jen Shear, Nora Normile, Park McArthur, and Jason Hirata, the exhibition’s title comes from a Rutgers University course taught by McArthur and Hirata in the Spring of 2020 that focused on the multitude of roles and people who shape what we think of as conventions for experiencing, distributing, and conserving works of art.
Invocation of Marcel DuchampSALON: Dark Matter, Montreal
November 13, 2017
Part of the event SALON: Dark Matter hosted by Concordia University, this participatory performance is both an invocation ritual and an opportunity to encounter those whom we consider our references. Performed in the context of academia, where we usually only experience our references through archives, we offered a way to meet them through this invocation ritual.
The performance lasted 45 minutes and involved asking: 'Marcel, are you there? If you are there, manifest yourself. Marcel, are you there?'. The documentation of the performance shows the séance abruptly ending when a participant spins the bicycle wheel.
Folly Tree Arboretum2x4 Internship, New York, 2022
As part of an Internship at 2x4 as a graphic designer, I helped designing the visual identity and website for Folly Tree Arboretum, a digital and physical archive of trees situated in the East Hamptons. Designers: Tim Gambell, Danny Well, Paul Hoppe.
Radio Exorcism
FOFA Gallery, with Laura Acosta and Vincent Routhier for Poe Radio, Montreal
July 20 – August 21, 2016
Radio Exorcism is a two-part performance in the vitrine of FOFA Gallery and was part of Laura Acosta's project POE radio: a performance pirate radio broadcast and a space for collaboration, improvisation and social engagement between institutional and public communities.