Ilana Halperin: Felt Events

Texts explore the multifaceted conceptual practice of the artist Ilana Halperin.

Ilana Halperin (b.1973) is an artist who shares her birthday with an Icelandic volcano. Working through the aesthetics of geology since the late 1990s, her multifaceted, conceptual practice unearths the intimate poetics of rocks, minerals, and body stones. Halperin's fieldwork has led her from erupting volcanoes in Hawaii to petrifying caves in France and geothermal springs in Japan. Felt Events surveys the last two decades of Halperin's output (1999-2020), representing a mid-career moment of reflection.

Felt Events includes critical and experimental writing from international curators, Lisa Le Feuvre and Naoko Mabon, art historians Andrew Patrizio and Dominic Paterson, anthropologist Jerry Zee, and writer Nicola White. It also offers examples of Halperin's performance lectures, some of which appear in print for the first time.

This collection introduces Halperin's work to new generations of artists, writers, and environmental activists--those who will shape the critical landscapes of the twenty-first century.