Sonya Rapoport

Sonya Rapoport
Born	(1923-10-06)October 6, 1923 Boston, Massachusetts
Died	June 1, 2015(2015-06-01) (aged 91) Berkeley, California
Nationality	American
Known for	conceptual art, new media art, feminist art
Website	sonyarapoport.org

Sonya Rapoport (October 6, 1923 – June 1, 2015) was an

Rapoport studied biology at Boston University and economics at New York University, graduating with a B.A. in 1946. In 1944, she married Henry Rapoport, a chemistry professor, and went with him to New York, Washington, D.C., and then to Berkeley, CA. Sonya Rapoport pursued her studies in art throughout their moves. She attended the Art Students League of New York where she studied with Reginald Marsh, then entered the Corcoran School of Art and Design to study figurative art and oil painting, and finally enrolled in the graduate program in Art Practice at the University of California, Berkeley, where she studied with Erle Loran, receiving her M.A. in 1949. The Berkeley art practice curriculum at that time was heavily influenced by the aesthetic philosophy of Hans Hofmann, although the school produced artists as divergent in their practices as Rapoport, Jay DeFeo, and Sam Francis.

Career

Early career

In 1971 Rapoport discovered a series of vintage geological survey charts from an Idaho Snake River Dam project in an antique architect's desk she had purchased. She used these charts as a background for drawing and painting, as well as stencils she made from found objects. Objects such as a pool-cue holder signified an udder,  while a plastic uterus from an anatomy kit stood for the womb: a lexicon of feminine symbols she referred to as her Nu-Shu language. Nüshu is a script created in the 15th century as a “secret language,” used exclusively by women in Hunan Province, China. Rapoport used this feminist pattern language extensively throughout the 1970s on large-scale paintings as well as mixed-media works on found continuous-feed computer paper.

In the late 1970s, Rapoport also developed a collaborative practice as her work moved away from painting and drawing into the realm of installation, performance, and research-based mixed-media projects. She collaborated with research chemists, software engineers, and anthropologists to realize her increasingly complex projects. For instance, as part her  collaboration with the anthropologist Dorothy Washburn during the 1970s, Rapoport incorporated archeological notations based on the study of Native American artifacts into her computer drawings.

Between 1979 and 1983 Rapoport worked on her conceptual project Objects on My Dresser,

During the 1980s, Rapoport developed related conceptual works that utilized data visualization and computer coding. In some of these projects, Rapoport introduced computer-assisted interactive installations, where the audience was invited to participate and contribute data for the projects’ subsequent iterations. These include Biorhythm,^[5] Shoe-Field,^[6] Digital Mudra,^[7] The Animated Soul: Gateway to Your Ka,^[8] and Sexual Jealousy: The Shadow of Love.^[9]

Late career

From 1989 to 2013 Rapoport’s artistic focus shifted to net art. During this period she produced more than a dozen interactive web projects. Rapoport was an early adopter of internet technology and was affiliated with a community of like-minded creators associated with MIT’s Leonardo Magazine, including Judy Malloy and Meredith Tromble.  These works were motivated by her interest in the humanistic potential of computers, and informed by her knowledge of programming and experience creating work that responded to viewer’s choices.

Reflecting Rapoport’s interest in the social construction of gender, race, and religion, she sourced imagery from a variety of sources, including art history, the sciences, newspapers, and her earlier works. The digitally-collaged imagery and innovative hypertext interfaces that comprise these works embody the early internet aesthetic.

In the 2010s, Rapoport’s contribution to contemporary art was recognized in two survey exhibitions and the volume Pairing of Polarities: The Life and Art of Sonya Rapoport,^[1] edited by Terri Cohn. In 2014, the Bancroft Library of Western Americana at the University of California Berkeley acquired Rapoport’s archives.

Legacy

The Sonya Rapoport Legacy Trust was established and endowed during Rapoport's lifetime to preserve her work and to broaden its critical and historical recognition. The Trust supports her legacy through a variety of initiatives including exhibitions, loans of artworks, research, publications, conservation, and educational programs for the public and the scholarly communities. It also maintains a collection of Rapoport's artwork in a variety of media and encourages collaborative projects with artists, writers, and scientists in recognition of Rapoport’s unique methodology. Study of the Sonya Rapoport Papers at the Bancroft Library, UC Berkeley is also encouraged.

Recent exhibitions

Sonya Rapoport: biorhythm, San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose, California, 2020 ^{[10] [11]}

Spotlight, Frieze New York, 2020^[12]

The Computer Pays its Debt: Women, Textiles, and Technology, 1965-1985, Center for Craft, Asheville, NC, 2020

Shifting Terrain – Works on Paper from the Collection, SFMOMA, 2020

Refiguring the Future, Hunter College Art Galleries, New York, 2019^[13]

Sonya Rapoport: An Aesthetic Response, Casemore Kirkeby Gallery, 2019^[14]

Yes or No? Krowswork, Oakland, California 2015^{[15] [16]}

ImPOSSIBLE CONVERSATIONS? Fresno Art Museum, Fresno, California, 2014

ImPOSSIBLE CONVERSATIONS? Data Gathering Event. Martina }{ Johnston Gallery, Berkeley, California, 2013

Spaces of Life: The Art of Sonya Rapoport. Mills College Art Museum, Oakland, California, 2012

Sonya Rapoport: Pairings of Polarities. Kala Institute Art Gallery, Berkeley, California, 2011 ^[17]

References