Praba Pilar is a diasporic Colombian artist disrupting the overwhelmingly passive participation in the contemporary ‘cult of the techno-logic.’ Over the last two decades Pilar has presented cultural productions integrating performance art, street theatre, invisible theatre, electronic installations, radio programming, digital works, video, websites and writing. These projects have traveled widely to museums, galleries, universities, performance festivals, conferences, public streets, political meetings, bookstores, bars, and radio airwaves around the world.
Shaped by resistance to the colonial project throughout the Americas, Pilar focuses her solo practice on projects challenging complex state/corporate systems of control, domination and death. She is also embarked on an all-encompassing post-human/microbiomial multi-species journey with Anuj Vaidya titled Larval Rock Stars; is working with Ignacio Valero on a digital humanities initiative, and collaborates extensively on one time events. Some of the artists and scholars she has worked with include Alex Wilson, Balitronica Gomez and Pocha, John Jota Leanos, Rene Garcia, Erika Hannes, Larry Bogad, Adam Zaretsky, Freya Olafson, Mia S. van Leeuwen, Theo Pelmus, Luna, Lyndsay Ladobruk, Martin Franco and various photographers and videographers who have helped document her work. She is immeasurably helped by Janet Sarson on numerous aspects of her practices.
Pilar is the recipient of numerous awards, including a Post-Doctoral Fellowship in Digital Humanities and New Media with the Hub for Innovative Exchange at the University of Winnipeg, the UC Davis Presidential Pre-Doctoral Fellowship, the Puffin Foundation Award, the Creative Capital Award, the Creative Work Fund Award, and the Potrero Nuevo Fund Award and two nominations for a Rockefeller Award. Her most recent writing has been featured in Performance, Religion and Spirituality; ROAR; Feminist & Scholar Online; Lateral Journal of the Cultural Studies Association, Women's Eco Artists Dialogue; Dance Current, KATALOG, localflux, and h+Magazine. She has co-written and solo authored book chapters dating back to 2001. Her work has been written about in journals and books, and she was featured in a book on inspirational women by Cathleen Rountree, On Women Turning Thirty: Making Choices, Finding Meaning (2000).
Pilar has a PhD in Performance Studies, with designated emphases in Studies in Performance Practice as Research and in Feminist Theory and Research from the University of California, Davis; a Bachelor of Arts in Intermedia Arts from Mills College; studied Max/MSP/Jitter with Bob Ostertag at UC Davis; took workshops in electronic circuitry and PureData programming with artists Ken Gregory and Andy Rudolph, and electronics principles with artist Andrew Milne at Video Pool in Winnipeg. In much earlier chapter of life, she studied economics, political science and development at NYU for three years.
