Whitney Vangrin
Instagram: @whitneyvangrin
Website: http://www.whitneyvangrin.com
Bio: "Whitney Vangrin is an interdisciplinary artist working across performance, video, and installation. Her work merges film, ritual, and folk traditions to create immersive experiences that explore vulnerability and adaptation. She holds an MFA from UC Davis and has exhibited at MoMA PS1, Swiss Institute, ICA London, and ICA Philadelphia. Vangrin co-founded 1:1 in NYC and is the founder of Night Tea, a series of relationship-focused gatherings featuring fermentation-inspired menus, non-alcoholic drink traditions, and opportunities for artists and patrons to connect in spaces of cultural renewal. "
Statement: "I am an artist working across performance, video, painting, and sculpture. I draw inspiration from film, ritual, folk traditions, and alchemical allegories. My performances—equal parts physical and psychological—question perceptions of authenticity, creating works that hinge between reality and simulation. At the core of my practice is an exploration of lived experience, rejecting passivity while fostering empathy, introspection, and presence for both performer and audience. I seek to provoke, awaken, and connect, offering emotional yet alluring entry points into subject matter that is both fatalistic and hopeful. I work with varied materials such as dough, seaweed, ferments, blown glass, latex tubing, and replicas of the body. These, alongside my engagement with fermentation, act as metaphors for cycles of dismemberment, incubation, and regeneration. Fermentation, as both process and symbol, connects the human body to broader ecosystems of transformation and adaptation. Through this lens, I explore inter-species symbiosis and the preservation of cultural heritage. I cultivate works that encourage resilience, mindfulness, and adaptability. By merging synthetic and organic elements, I highlight tensions between natural processes and human intervention, raising questions about identity, agency, and the limits of control. With a multidisciplinary approach, I celebrate the dynamism of experience to inspire curiosity and compassion, ultimately opening space for reflection, restoration, and reimagined ways of connecting with the world and one another. "
