Suzie Silver STUDIO Retrospective
April 16, 2026 5:30 PM–7:00 PM
4919 Frew Street
College of Fine Arts, Room 111
Pittsburgh, PA 15213
The STUDIO is proud to present a retrospective of Suzie Silver, our friend and colleague whose internationally acclaimed work has shaped the lives of so many people, not least of all the School of Art at Carnegie Mellon University. We’re hosting an exclusive screening selection covering more than three decades of boundary bending work from the artist and professor behind Strange Attractors, TransQ TV, TransQ Live, Fairy Fantastic and much more. Stay after the screening for a brief Q&A with Suzie and STUDIO Associate Director Harrison Apple.
Bio:
Suzie Silver’s pioneering work in queer performance, video and curation has spanned more than three decades. Celebrated for the ability to harness desire as a radical force, Silver’s works disrupt social boundaries in irreverent celebrations of camp, wonder, and joy.
Created during Silver’s undergraduate years at UC San Diego, the short video “You Know Something” was featured in the first-ever museum exhibition of queer video works. Titled “Homo Video: Where We Are Now,” the landmark show was curated by William Olander for the New Museum in New York City (1986–1987).
Silver’s canonical queer videos, Freebird and A Spy emerged from her involvement with the performance art scene in Chicago in the late 80’s and early 90s.
A prolific collaborator, Silver often works at the intersection of community-building, performance and media production. Key collaborators include:
Lawrence Steger: Peccatum Mutum (The Silent Sin), In Through The Out Door
Iris Moore: Dangerous Pleasures, Bait and Switch: At Night Every Boy Is A Girl
Scott Andrew: Trans-Q Television, TQ Live! (Joseph Hall, sarah huny young)
Eric Moe: Tri-Stan, Jozaphine Freedom, Eric Moe’s Idyll
Christopher Kardamibikis and Jasdeep Khaira: Strange Attractors: Investigations in Non-Humanoid Extraterrestrial Sexualities.
Since 2003, Silver has collaborated with Hilary Harp on a wide range of video, media performance and installation projects including their most recent and ongoing, Fairy Fantastic! a platform for the creation of queer folk and fairy tale cultures.
While teaching at Carnegie Mellon, Silver instigated a number of courses where students created public facing projects and events including Pop Cabaret: Performance Art at the Andy Warhol Museum, Trans-Q Television and Radio Play.
Silver’s work has exhibited and screened widely nationally and internationally at venues including: The Whitney Museum of Art, The New Museum, Documenta, ICA Boston, ICA London, Pacific Film Archives, Centre de Cultura Contemporanea de Barcelona, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, Anthology Film Archives (NYC), London Film Festival, Seoul Film Festival, and LGBTQ Film/Video Festivals all over the world.
Since 1999 Silver has worked as Professor in the School of Art at Carnegie Mellon University.
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