Praba Pilar
Performance
Oakland, CA
Praba Pilar is a diasporic Colombian artist and scholar creating performances, digital and electronic works, experimental talks, and scholarly writing focused on emerging technologies and social justice. Since 2020 she’s been working with artificial intelligence (AI) companions, large language models, and platforms on subversive, playful, and simultaneously serious projects challenging techno-colonialism.
Pilar’s artworks have been featured at SIGGRAPH; Facultad de Bellas Artes, Altea, Spain; TTTlabs in Crete, Greece; Vancouver's LIVE BIENNALE; Toronto's OCAD and McLuhan Center for Culture and Technology; Mexico City’s Museo Universitario Arte Contemporaneo; Galeria Studio Cerrillo in San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas; the Museum of World Culture in Gothenberg, Sweden; the Zero One Festival at ISEA; New York City’s the Kitchen, Grace Performance Space and CUNY Graduate Center; and in California SF MOMA, Center for the Arts at Yerba Buena, SFAI, Galeria de la Raza, Los Angeles MOCA, the Oakland Museum of California and many more. She has presented her work at numerous conferences around the world, including at the Society for Literature, Science, & the Arts; the Taboo, Transgression and Transcendence in Art & Science; the College Art Association; and was a work group leader of the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics in the Americas Encuentros in Mexico City, Santiago, Chile, and Montreal, Canada.
Pilar’s most recent awards include the TTT Feral BioArt residency in Crete, Greece (2024), the Memes as Social Practice Residency at UC Santa Cruz (2021); the MACLA/Movimiento de Arte y Cultura Latino Americana Cultura Power Fellowship (2021); the Headlands Center for the Arts Community Rapid Response Award (2020); the Emeryville Community Grants Program (2019); and the California Arts Council Local Impact Award (2019). She has solo authored and co-written essays and book chapters dating back to 2001, and her work has been written about in numerous journals and books.
Pilar has a bachelor’s degree in Intermedia Arts from Mills College, and a PhD in Performance Studies from the University of California, Davis. She was awarded the Davis Humanities Institute's Presidential Pre-Doctoral Fellowship, and a Post-Doctoral Fellowship in Digital Humanities and New Media with the Hub for Innovative Exchange at the University of Winnipeg. She is presently teaching in the Critical Studies Department of California College of the Arts, and has previously taught at UC Davis, the University of Winnipeg, and the Summer Institute of Performance Studies at Northwestern University. Pilar is the Co-Director of the Bioarts Ethical Advisory Kommission, an Emeritus Board Member of Women Eco Artists Dialogue, and is embarked on a long-term experimental art collaboration with Dr. Anuj Vaidya titled Larval Rock Stars.