Laurel Schwulst and Sydney Shen

Sydney Shen (b. 1989) is a visual artist living and working in New York. She received her BFA from The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in 2011. She exhibits her artwork at galleries, institutions, and fairs worldwide. Currently Shen is working on a large-scale, interactive public sculpture for Riverside Park, New York, through the Works In Public Program at the Art Students League in partnership with the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation. She received the 2019–2020 Jerome Foundation Queens Museum Emerging Artist Fellowship, and was a 2019–2020 resident of the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Workspace Program. Select solo exhibitions and projects include First Chair, Gallery Vacancy at Art Basel Hong Kong 2023; Cupio Dissolvi, Gallery Vacancy at Liste Art Fair Basel, 2021; Strange But True, Queens Museum, New York, 2021; Misery Whip, Gallery Vacancy, Shanghai, 2021; Every Good Boy Does Fine, Sophie Tappeiner, Vienna, 2019; and Onion Master, New Museum, New York, 2019. Recent group exhibitions include G Museum, Nanjing, 2023; Simone Subal Gallery, New York, 2022; Lubov, New York, 2022; Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler, Berlin, 2022; 47 Canal, New York, 2022; and Museum Het Valkhof, Nijmegen, 2021. Shen’s works are in the collections of Asymmetry Art Foundation, London; G Museum, Nanjing; Longlati Foundation, Hong Kong; Macalline Art Center, Beijing; M+ Museum, Hong Kong; and Sigg Collection, Basel.

Laurel Schwulst (b. 1988) is an artist, designer, writer, educator, and technologist. She is interested in ambient forms of design and literature, public works, and the poetic potential of the web. She is recognized for her experiential projects-as-worlds, her expanded writing practice, her creative direction leadership, her websites, her innovative learning materials and educational environments, and her ongoing collaborations. Her writing (published in venues including The New York Times, The Creative Independent, and Art in America) has taken the form of essays, perfume reviews, and interviews with other artists. For over a decade, she has taught classes and workshops (at universities including Yale and Princeton) and has presented internationally at cultural, academic, and internet-native institutions (at venues including BBC Radio 4, RISD, University of Seoul, Google, and Wikipedia). Schwulst serves as director of the gift shop at Are.na, a platform for networked curation and teaches design at Princeton. She lives in New York.