British-Australian artist Sophie Kahn (b. 1980) studied at Goldsmiths College, University of London, and at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Born in London, Kahn was raised in Melbourne, Australia. Her complex work combines cutting-edge means of production like 3D laser scanning and printing with computer-aided design and the classic technique of bronze casting - creating a unique Victorian-futuristic aesthetic. Her sculptures and 3D animations address the resonance of death in the still image, owing their fragmented aesthetic to the interaction of new and old media, and the collision of the human body with imaging technology. Kahn: “I create sculptures and video works that resemble deconstructed monuments or memorials. (...) The precise scanning technology (I use to create my works) was not designed to represent the body, which is always in flux. When confronted with a moving body, it receives conflicting spatial coordinates and generates fragmentary results, or a ‘motion blur’.” Kahn is interested in the manner in which technology can fail to capture life and what the poetics of that failure might look like. The voids, frayed edges and blind spots revealed in the materialised object created from a 3D scan illustrate what the machine is unable to recognise; they form a metaphor for the limited perspective that any single technology or individual can achieve of life as a whole.

Kahn’s work has been exhibited internationally including in New York, Los Angeles, London, Paris, Sydney, Tokyo, Osaka and Seoul. Her video works have been screened at festivals including at Transmediale, Zero1 Biennale, San Jose Biennial, Dance Camera West, Trampoline, Frequency and the Japan Media Arts Festival. Kahn has taught as a Visiting Associate Professor at the the Department of Digital Arts, Pratt Institute, and completed an Open Studio residency at the Museum of Arts and Design, New York. Her work has received support from the Australian Council for the Arts, the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Centre at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and other funding bodies. She is a 2011 New York Foundation for the Arts Digital and Electronic Arts Fellow.

Sophie Kahn lives and works in New York City.