Art & Art History: Frames of Reference Series, Tiffany Sia

Join the Department of Art & Art History for the Frames of Reference series, an annual program of artists' films and videos. The event is programmed and organized by Jeremy Drummond, associate professor in visual and media arts practice.

Frames of Reference showcases some of the most creative, challenging, thoughtful, and visionary artists working in film, video, and alternative media today. Programs feature artists and artworks that resist conventions and ideologies of mainstream media; explore creative, innovative approaches to narrative and experiments in time-based media; and embrace unique viewpoints, perspectives, or frames of reference.

Learn more about the Frames of Reference series.

The first program features film screenings followed by a Q&A with Brett Story.

Tiffany Sia (b. Hong Kong, 1988) is an artist, filmmaker and writer who lives and works in New York. Sia has directed several short films, including Never Rest/ Unrest (2020), Do Not Circulate (2021), and What Rules the Invisible (2022), which have screened at TIFF Toronto International Film Festival, MoMA Doc Fortnight, New York Film Festival, Flaherty Film Seminar and elsewhere. The artist has previously had solo exhibitions at Artists Space, New York; Felix Gaudlitz, Vienna; and Maxwell Graham Gallery, New York. Her work has been included in group exhibitions at Fondazione Prada, Italy; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Seoul Museum of Art, South Korea; Kunstverein Düsseldorf, Germany; Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Denmark; The Douglas Hyde Gallery, Ireland and elsewhere.

Her essays have appeared in Film Quarterly, October and LUX Moving Image. Inpatient Press published her chapbook Salty Wet in 2019, and its artist book sequel Too Salty Too Wet was published by Speculative Place in 2020. Her first collection of essays On and Off-Screen Imaginaries was published by Primary Information in 2024. Sia was the recipient of the Baloise Art Prize in 2024 and the George C. Lin Emerging Filmmaker Award in 2022. She is teaching at Cooper Union this fall. Sia is interested in how material culture (particularly print, digital material and film/video) traces and enables governance, geopolitical power and perception. She is interested in how such forces play out and construct imaginaries of place, particularly exceptional polities beyond the national (from Hong Kong to elsewhere). The artist's ongoing occupation lies within the struggle to represent time, geography and the limits of the record.

Co-sponsored by the Department of Art & Art History, School of Arts & Sciences, and University of Richmond Museums.