Ilana Halperin RSA was born in New York in 1973, is based between Glasgow and the Isle of Bute. She received her MFA from the Glasgow School of Art and her BFA from Brown University.
Halperin has had solo exhibitions worldwide at venues including Berliner Medizinhistorisches Museum der Charité; Artists Space, New York; Manchester Museum; and Akiyoshidai Natural History Museum, Yamaguchi, Japan. She was the Inaugural Artist Fellow at National Museums Scotland and Artist-Curator of Geology for Shrewsbury Museum and Art Gallery. The Library of Earth Anatomy, a permanent commission at The Exploratorium in San Francisco opened 2017. Her solo exhibition Minerals of New York opened at Leeds Arts University, and toured to The Hunterian, Glasgow in 2019.
Halperin's work has featured in numerous group exhibitions including: The Forces Behind the Forms, Kunstmuseum, Thun, Switzerland and touring; Cristallisations, Musée du Cristal Saint-Louis, curated by Centre Pompidou Metz, Saint-Louis-lès-Bitche, France; Allegory of the Cave Painting, Extra City, Antwerp, Belgium; Estratos curated by Nicolas Bourriaud, PAC Murcia, Spain; Sharjah Biennial 8, UAE; Experimental Geography, curated by Nato Thompson (touring 2008-11). Her exhibition There Is A Volcano Behind My House at Mount Stuart, Isle of Bute was postponed due to Covid-19 and will open in Spring 2021. A forthcoming volume on her work entitled Felt Events, edited by Dr. Catriona McAra, will be published by Strange Attractor/MIT Press in Autumn 2021. Ilana shares her birthday with the Eldfell volcano in Iceland.
