Laura Splan

Resident Artist at (Re)Create during the Summer 2014

As an interdisciplinary collaborator, Splan’s research-based studio practice includes working with scientists, technicians, and engineers in both industry and academia. She was a member of the New Museum’s NEW INC “Creative Science” incubator imagining creative applications for science and technology. As a Bioartist-in-Residence at the uCity Science Center, she collaborated with scientists at Integral Molecular to interrogate interspecies entanglements and invisible labor in biotechnology. In “Sticky Settings”, a collaboration supported by the Simons Foundation, Splan explored computational translations of molecular systems with theoretical biophysicist Adam Lamson at the Flatiron Institute. As an Artist-in-Residence at NEW INC+EY Metaverse Lab, Splan collaborated with creative technologists to develop extended reality (XR/VR) artworks that reveal “virtual residues” persisting in the physical world while exploring possibilities for new materially liminal experiences. As a Black Box Projects Artist-in-Residence at Beall Center for Art + Technology, Splan is collaborating with the Park Lab at UC Irvine to explore environmental influences on gene expression for a project exploring epigenetics and ecologies.

As an educator, Splan has held academic appointments at Stanford University, teaching interdepartmental Art courses to Engineering, Computer Science, Biology, Math, as well as Art majors. As an artist-in-residence, she has taught academic seminars at the University of Maine and Illinois State University. Her public workshops have been hosted by the Fredrickson Family Innovation Lab, Tang Teaching Museum, and Coalesce Center for Biological Arts. Splan was a Digital Arts Fellow supported by the National Endowment for the Arts at AS220 Industries, where she taught creative coding and physical computing workshops. She has volunteered as a computer literacy instructor for underserved communities at Imani House in Brooklyn and as a facilitator and educator for the ACRE Residency Technology Studio. She has been a studio practice advisor for both independent artists and students at San Francisco Art Institute, California College of Art, Arts Council England, and NEW INC at the New Museum. Splan also provides studio practice advising to independent artists through sliding scale Online Office Hours on Plexus Projects.

As a curator, Splan has produced new media art projects, including “Stimulus Transmit”, a moving image series that premiered on San Francisco public access television in 1997. During that time, she provided volunteer production support for COYOTE Street Wise, a public access television show on body politics hosted by sex worker activists Carol Queen and Margo St. James. She has been a visiting critic at numerous institutions, including The Crit Lab, University of Cincinnatti, and UNC Chapel Hill. She has served on selection committees and juries for the Biodesign Challenge and ACRE Residency. Her recent curatorial projects have included interdisciplinary programming and exhibitions for Creative Tech Week, as well as her experimental project space Plexus Projects where she curates “GUI/GOOEY”, an ongoing series of group exhibitions exploring digital representations of the natural world.

Laura Splan lives and works in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, the home of several superfund sites, in a building that has been a pharmaceutical factory and a knitting factory and is now an elaborate interactive installation for her cat.

SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2025 RL Window, RYAN LEE Gallery, New York, NY, Curator: Derek Piech, Hypertelic

2024 UTS Data Arena, Sydney, AU, Bloom (collaboration with The Cardiovascular Regeneration Lab & Linda Dement)

‍2024 Onassis ONX, Presented by NEW INC+EY Metaverse Lab, New York, NY, Metafrictions Preview

2023 Vanderbilt Museum Planetarium, Curator: Paul Rubery, Centerport, NY, A Guided Sublimation

2021 Tang Teaching Museum, Elevator Music Series, Saratoga Springs, NY, Curator: Rebecca McNamara, Rhapsody for an Expanded Biotechnological Apparatus

2020 BioBAT Art Space, Brooklyn Army Terminal, Brooklyn, NY, Curators: Jeannine Bardo/Elena Soterakis, Unraveling

2019 Esther Klein Gallery, Philadelphia, PA, Curator: Angela McQuillan, Conformations

2018 Occurrence Gallery, Montréal, QC, Curator: Lili Michaud, Embodied Objects

2017 NYU Langone Medical Center Art Gallery, New York, NY, Curator: Katherine Meehan, Manifest

2016 Grizzly Grizzly, Philadelphia, PA, Curators: Talia Greene/Amy Hicks, Raw Material (w/Gail Wight)

2015 Whitebox Art Center, New York, NY, Curator: Gale Elston, (Re)Create Artist Residency Award Exhibition (w/Ève K. Tremblay) 

SELECTED COLLECTIONS

‍Thoma Art Foundation

Anne & Michael Spalter Digital Art Collection

Chan Zuckerberg Initiative

Berkeley Art Museum