Astria Suparak’s cross-disciplinary projects address complex and urgent issues (like institutionalized racism, classism, and colonialism) made accessible through a popular culture lens, such as science-fiction movies, rock music, and sports.

Straddling creative and scholarly work, Suparak’s projects chronicle subcultures and omitted perspectives. Her series Asian Futures is an incisive taxonomy of white Western film tropes, delving into histories of architecture, fashion, religion, and science; her Tropicsss series proposes possible, expanded affinities and solidarities across geographies and national borders; and her Sports series playfully challenges the idea that the worlds of sports, art, and politics are mutually exclusive.

In recent years, Suparak’s installations, videos, and performances have been presented at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Institute of Contemporary Art Los Angeles; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and ArtScience Museum, Singapore.

“Astria Suparak’s research-based multi-media practice exposes society’s latent biases, repeated stereotypes, and caustic prejudices with a refined logic that leverages our popular culture media landscape into an urgent questioning of the status quo,” remarked juror and SFMOMA Curator of Architecture & Design Joseph Becker