AWE USA 2024
Ryat Yezbick is a visual artist who uses their training in cultural anthropology to inform the issues they tackle as a maker. Yezbick investigates technology's impact on group identity, morals, and collective memory through public archives and collaborations. Figuring their lived experience centrally in their work, Yezbick addresses a complex set of questions around security, gender, home, family, love, violence, power, and responsibility in the era of digital surveillance and decentralized global conflict. They work in a variety of mediums – notably live performance, experimental documentary, installation, and new media – that have garnered support from audiences and curators internationally. They are a published author, multi-time grant recipient, art and technology consultant, and academic in the Narrative and Emerging Media Program at Arizona State University. They have over 8 years’ experience in emerging media curating and designing future-oriented programming for notable institutions and philanthropic foundations including The Music Center, the Guild of Future Architects, the Doris Duke Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, the Omidyar Network and more. As a visual artist, their work has been exhibited in solo exhibitions in Los Angeles, Melbourne, Glasgow, and Athens, and in notable group exhibitions and performances at the Los Angeles Philharmonic (Los Angeles), REDCAT (Los Angeles), Materials & Applications (Los Angeles), Human Resources (Los Angeles), The Akademie Schloss Solitude (Stuttgart), The Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art, Glasgow International 2018 (Glasgow), The Banff Center for the Arts and Creativity (Banff), Gertrude Contemporary (Melbourne), Space One (Seoul), the Bangkok Biennial MAHA Pavilion (Bangkok), LAXART (Los Angeles), Craft Contemporary (Los Angeles), and the Queer Biennial (Los Angeles).