BIO
Sidney Whipps is an interdisciplinary artist based in Cincinnati, Ohio. She is currently a senior Fine Arts student at the University of Cincinnati’s DAAP Program. Sidney’s curiosity stems from our evolving relationship with communication devices and how that relationship influences our society. Sidney's work has been shown in several group exhibitions in the Ohio Valley.
ARTIST STATEMENT
We simultaneously live in both a physical and digital ecosystem, each defined by ubiquity, immediacy, simulation, information, and claims to authenticity. How do we choose to retain and transmit information through physical objects and digital search systems?
The physical objects we create and the digital platforms we rely on are extensions of ourselves - systems of transmission that once began with clay tokens used for accounting and recording history; today, information is produced, stored, and accessed through networked devices and search engines. I use the rich history that clay provides to create hyperobjects of how both traditional clay forms and smartphones have an intertwined narrative. While digital systems depend on electricity and infrastructure, fired clay persists beyond our lifespan, suggesting a permanence that isn’t reflected in our contemporary devices. In the absence of digital networks, we may return to physical forms of inscription to preserve and communicate knowledge.