“Julia Phillips’s work is both poetic and rigorous, yielding uncanny psychological effects while transforming the fragmented body into a charged site of connection between the self and the other.” – Juror René Morales, James W. Alsdorf Chief Curator, MCA Chicago.

Julia Phillips is the 2023 Pritzker Pucker Family Foundation Artadia Award recipient.

Julia Phillips (b. 1985) was born in Hamburg and lives and works in Chicago and Berlin. She has had one-person exhibitions at MoMA PS1 in New York and the Kunstverein Braunschweig in Germany, and her work has been shown at numerous museums nationally and internationally, as well as the Berlin Biennial, the New Museum Triennial, and the recent 59th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, “The Milk of Dreams”. Her first public artwork commission, an interactive multimedia installation titled Observer, Observed will remain on view on the NY High Line / 26th Street until August 2023.

Inspired by tools and other functional objects, her sculptures are metaphors for social and psychological experiences. The pieces often feature ceramic elements cast from the body and include recurring elements, such as handles or wing nuts, that encourage the viewer to envision direct physical engagement with the work. Sometimes the body can help us to identify with experiences that are not our own.