Ash Arder

Ash Arder (b. 1988, Flint, Michigan) is a transdisciplinary artist whose research-based approach works to expose, deconstruct or reconfigure physical and conceptual systems – especially those related to ecology and/or industry. Arder manipulates physical and virtual environments to explore object and mark making, mechanical portraiture, sound design, and performance as tools for complicating dynamics of power between humans, machines, and the lands they occupy.

At the very core, Arder’s creative practice is concerned with the idea of relation. Relation is, for them, a basic tenet for understanding how collaboration between ideas and entities might occur. They use the idea of speculative collaboration as a framework for hacking systems, and they think of collaboration as a form of intimacy. The systems, exercises, and mediations Arder creates in their highly flexible practice each ponder the role of agency, both active and passive, in co-creating an event or phenomenon. Arder is interested in complicating viewers’ own understanding of their proximity to and participation in the systems and cycles reflected in their work and subsequently at larger societal and ecological scales. These complications or moments of tension between living entities, objects and space serve as a catalyst for interrogating the very conditions responsible for the glitch. Arder’s work and research probe historical events, popular culture, and industry for insight into what they think of as “relational glitches,” or ruptures in empathy.

Arder received an MFA from the Cranbrook Academy of Art. Recent residencies include University of Rochester (2018-2021), Recess (2019), and A Studio In The Woods (2018). Recent exhibitions include solo show A Study: Collision Detection, Hartnett Gallery, Rochester, NY (2018), and group shows Parallels and Peripheries, Museum of Contemporary Art, Detroit, MI (2019), Queer Tropics, Transformer, Washington, DC (2018), and Predicated., The Kitchen, New York, NY (2018).