BIOGRAPHY

Sydney Cooper was born in Los Angeles, California, the daughter of a Japanese and Jewish family. This lineage and the question of how these cultures might meet and mix has influenced her longtime interest in the idea of the hybrid. In 1984 Sydney moved east and received a true liberal arts education at Bennington College. Since then Cooper has lived in Paris, New York, Los Angeles, Tokyo, settling in New Mexico in 1991.

Cooper works with silver and palladium leaf, materials which explore the shifting nature of light as a mechanism to investigate ideas of time, contingency and change. Using gilded panels, and stacked and woven acetate as surfaces, she insinuates imagery. This imagery of adapters, connectors and transformers examines the idea of man as homo-Faber, the toolmaker. Cooper sees tools as stand-ins for human activities. The interaction of these images advancing and receding contingent on the viewer's position allows active engagement with the work, completing it.

Cooper has exhibited extensively, including the Santa Monica Museum in California, the Center for Contemporary Art in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Allied Cultural Prosthetics in New York City as well as numerous galleries and venues. She has participated in and co-curated several site-specific public installations such as the Windows Project in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Bloc-Busta in New Mexico, and Wallworks at Plan B in Santa Fe, New Mexico.