Susan Hiller (1940-2019) was an American artist. Her background as an anthropologist combined with her interest in examining real or imagined phenomena, probing the unseen and unheard in order to create art that evokes absences, memories and ghosts, informed Hiller’s work through the mediums of installation, video, photography, performance, and writing. She also combined sight with sound, primitive desires with sophisticated technology and art with popular culture.
In 2001, she chaired a discussion with Adrian Searle, Gilane Tawadros, Matthew Collings and David A. Bailey for Iniva’s ‘Question Time: Contemporary Art and Culture in the 21st Century.’
She has exhibited extensively, including the Polygon, Vancouver, Canada (2018), the Lisson Gallery, New York, USA (2017), Pérez Art Museum Miami, (2016), Lisson Gallery, London (2015), Les Abbattoirs, Musée d’Art Moderne et Contemporain, Toulouse, France (2014), Golden Thread Gallery, Belfast (2013), Kunsthalle Nürnberg, Nuremberg, Germany (2012), amongst others.
She graduated from Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts in 1961, and then went on to do postgraduate work at Tulane University, New Orleans until 1965. She was based in London before her death in 2019.