Monica Praba Pilar
A New York/Colombian multi-disciplinary artist, Praba Pilar has worked on multiple projects in the public sphere through public art, site installations, performances, and websites. Her background in community work and political activism establishes the platform in which she artistically confronts the conflict between humanitarian, political and economic motivations.
Over the last few years Praba has investigated issues of biotechnology and the ethical questions raised by developments in seed sterilization, germline engineering, intellectual property regulation, and evolving definitions of the body, humanity and spirituality. In 1998 she founded the interventionist performing group “The Hexterminators: SuperHeroes of the Genetix Devolution”. The group of artists, activists and scientists did multiple collaborative installations, performances, panel discussions and university lectures as part of an extended Carnaval of Biolife that explored the economic and environmental impacts of biotechnology on communities of color around the world. The website she developed, Artactivist.com, functioned as a vehicle for dialogue among multiple groups of artists and activists nationally and internationally. It initiated the US bioengineering action network (BAN) and the international group Artists for Responsible Genetics. This work won numerous awards and received over 100,000 visitors. It has been featured in cTheory magazine (2001); and in the book The CD Handbook: A Brief History and Practical Advice for the Politically Disenchanted, edited by James Tracy (2002).
In 1999 Praba expanded the scope of her investigation to encompass information technologies. She has worked to increase dialogue around issues of race and class in access to content production on the World Wide Web. As a founding member of Los Cybrids: La Raza Techno-Critica, she is working to incite critical dialogue around evolving forms of ubiquitous computing, wireless connectivity and the surveillance society – through installation art, public murals and a series of performances at the LAB Gallery, the SF Museum of Modern Art, the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art and universities around the country.
She is the recent recipient of a Puffin Foundation Grant (2004), an Association of Performing Arts Presenters Award (2003), Creative Capital Foundation Award (2002), Zellerbach Family Fund Award (2002), the Potrero Nuevo Fund Prize of New Langton Arts (2001) and the Creative Work Fund Grant (2000). She recently completed a Master Residency with MacArthur Fellow Pepon Osorio (2000) at MACLA San Jose, and was featured in a book on inspirational women by Cathleen Rountree, On Women Turning Thirty: Making Choices, Finding Meaning (2000). Praba currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Women’s Environmental Artists Directory and on the advisory board of the Center for Ethics, Economics and Popular Education.