Merging Performance & Technology: Curator Lisa Rockford and Tiffany Trenda at CONTEXT Talks

https://www.contextartmiami.com/context-talks

Explore the fusion of technology in the work of award-winning performance artist and digital creator, Tiffany Trenda. Trenda will first share her innovative approaches to performance art, which adapt advanced technologies as interactive elements which invite audience participation. Curator Lisa Rockford will dialogue with Trenda on how her work embraced changes in technology and transitioned into collaborations with AI. Trenda will specifically shed light on her mixed media works that are on view within Context, Special Projects, and the Art Miami fair, including the series’ “Digital Metamorphosis,” “Soft Interfaces,” and “Refractions of Materiality.” These works span the evolving landscape of contemporary technology, merging painting with AI and performative actions. Trenda invites us to confront the limitless potential and ambiguities of artmaking as it is continuously redefined by technological innovation.
 

Tiffany Trenda is a Los Angeles-based performance and new media artist with a career spanning over two decades. Her works have been showcased at prestigious venues including the Broad Art Museum, LACMA, the Exploratorium, and the World Expo in Shanghai. Trenda was notably featured in the performance program Metamorphoses of the Virtual during the 55th Venice Biennale. Her work has also been exhibited internationally, with presentations at the Faena Art Center in Buenos Aires, Art Center Nabi in South Korea, and the Barbican in London. Her pieces are part of permanent collections at the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art and Yale University’s Beinecke Library. Trenda holds a BFA from Art Center College of Design, Los Angeles and an MFA from UCLA’s Design and Media Arts program, Los Angeles. Her artistic practice explores the intersection of the human body and emerging technologies, focusing on how digital constructs mediate human experience and identity. Trenda challenges traditional notions of embodiment by creating immersive works that blur the boundaries between the physical and virtual. Through her performances and new media pieces, she encourages reflection on how technology reshapes our understanding of reality, prompting viewers to reconsider their relationship to both the material world and the digital age. Trenda's work opens critical conversations around the evolving nature of presence, perception, and the body in a technologized society.
 

Lisa Rockford is an independent curator, artist, and educator. As founder of Rockford Projects, Lisa has curated over 30 projects over the past 12 years with over 400 artists, by partnering with venues like Torrance Art Museum, L’space gallery NY, Doral Contemporary Art Museum, FAU University galleries, Bailey Contemporary Arts, and Whitespace-The Mordes Collection. Lisa earned an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2001, and is currently an Associate Professor at Broward College, where she has taught since 2006, and awarded Endowed Teaching Chair 2018 and Professor of the Year 2023. Lisa has provided public lectures at The Perez Museum of Art, The Fort Lauderdale Museum of Art, Girls Club-The Francie Bishop Good & David Horvitz Collection, Young at Art Museum, Bowling Green State University, Dillard School of the Arts, and annually provides educational tours for ArtNexus Magazine at the official Art Basel Miami Beach and The Armory Show NYC.