Jen Bervin

Hear from visual artist and poet Jen Bervin, whose research-driven, interdisciplinary works weave together art, writing, and science in complex yet elegant ways. Bervin is currently participating in the SETI Institute’s Artist in Residence program, which facilitates a cross-disciplinary exchange of ideas between artists and scientists. Her work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at the Des Moines Art Center; BRIC, Brooklyn; and the Granoff Center for the Creative Arts at Brown University, Providence; and featured in exhibitions at MASS MoCA, The Power Plant in Toronto, and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. She has published 10 books, including Silk Poems—a long-form poem presented both as a traditional volume (Nightboat Books) and as an implantable, silk biosensor developed in collaboration with Tufts University’s Silk Lab.

Bervin is the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including The Rauschenberg Residency (2016), the Asian Cultural Council’s Mandarin Oriental Arts Fellowship (2016), and a Creative Capital Grant (2013). Her work has been covered in Huffington Post, NPR, Artforum, Frieze, Hyperallergic, New Yorker, and the New York Times, and can be found in more than 30 international collections. In addition to her residency with SETI, Bervin is a 2018 Artist in Residence at the Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities and Block Museum at Northwestern University, Evanston, IL.

Cosponsored by Ohio State’s Department of Art, The Living Culture Initiative, and Science and Technology Studies Project, a Humanities & Arts Discovery Theme.