Susan Copich
"In each photo, I pose as an allegorical symbol creating a poetic moment or the middle of a narrative. Rather than losing myself in personal revery, I deliberately engage the viewer who is forced into roles of witness, audience and accessory."
Always uneasy with the codified art scene and more interested in outsider creativity, Susan Copich spent her early years as a modern dancer, clad in Doc Martens and cropped bleached hair. She rode a Honda Hawk throughout her adopted city of San Francisco, gaining a different perspective from the one mainstream America had to offer— capitalism, misogyny and a culture of compliance.
Susan unearthed more expressive techniques studying acting in NYC for a decade and sculpted a unique way to reclaim her power and follow her voice through art with a camera in hand and performative techniques mastered. She discovered an artistic narrative that weaves through her work: beauty and sex spun into the underbelly of darkness and complexity.
All of this underscores just how many textures and moods the artist Copich is capable of creating, from still photographic images to movement, sound and light. In 2014, she emerged with a photo series titled Domestic Bliss, which quickly gained notoriety as a poignant and sharp account of women's lives, but she was already planning an escape from the clutches of cult success. Her short 2016 film, The Cupcake, continued to explore the same theme with darker humor and found an audience eager to support the disruption of society's expectations about women. Next, the photographic series then he forgot my name surfaced, taking a strong visual p.o.v. on women's power and mortality, and continued her focus on self-portrait. The themes—pain of living, decay and a struggle for change— find their way into her latest work, Drive-By, Susan's first NFT.
Susan Copich has been featured in one-woman exhibitions and achieved recognition in numerous juried exhibitions in the U.S: PHOTOWORKS 2019, curated by James A. Ganz, Curator of Photography, J. Paul Getty Museum; the 2019 International Photography Awards, and the Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition. Copich has exhibited her work in solo and group exhibitions nationally and internationally: Umbrella Arts in NYC, Brownsville Museum of Fine Art, TX; Art for Peace Festival in Tehran, Iran; Moen Mason Gallery, Tucson AZ; and Sohn Fine Art, Lenox, MA. She has been an invited speaker at the Norman Rockwell Museum of Art and the Professional Women Photographers (PWP) in NYC.
