Colette Copeland is a interdisciplinary visual artist, arts educator, social activist and cultural critic/writer whose work examines issues surrounding gender, death and contemporary culture. Sourcing personal narratives and popular media, she utilizes video, photography, performance and sculptural installation to question societal roles and the pervasive influence of media, and technology on our communal enculturation.
For the past 13 years, she has lived in Dallas, Texas. Since 2011, she has taught Digital Photography, Contemporary Practices and Performance Art at University of Texas at Dallas. From 2011-2022, she taught Art Appreciation and Foundations of Art at Collin College. From 2002-2011, she taught photography, visual studies and critical writing at the University of Pennsylvania. She received her BFA from Pratt Institute in New York and her MFA from Syracuse University. She is the recipient of a Leeway Foundation Award for Art & Change and 2020 Kevin Mullins Memorial Award and was awarded a Fulbright Scholar Research Award for 2023/2024 working with female artists in India.
Over the past 31 years, her work has been exhibited in 34 solo exhibitions and 156 group exhibitions/festivals spanning 36 countries. Highlights include the Arad Biennale in Romania, the Museum of Fine Arts in Venado Tuerto, Argentina, the National Center for Contemporary Art in Moscow, Novosibirsk State Art Museum in Russia, City Nord in Hamburg, Germany, Ars Latina in Macerata, Italy, Mexicali, Baja and Castellon, Spain, Cultural Communication Center in Klapeda, Lithuania, Los Angeles Center for Digital Art, Scope Hamptons in New York, Kratkofil Film Festival in Bosnia/Herzgovina, and a traveling exhibition throughout India and Bangladesh, including Calcutta, Bombay and Dhaka.
For ten years, Copeland volunteered with Traffick911, an organization who helps sex trafficked youth. She served in the capacity of volunteer coordinator, public advocacy, community awareness and education. She also volunteered in juvenile detention facilities teaching Nia dance therapy to incarcerated teen girls.
Copeland writes cultural and arts criticism for Glasstire, the oldest online-only art magazine in the country, as well as Arteidolia, an online arts and creative writing journal. She has also written for The Photo Review, Afterimage Journal of Media Arts and Cultural Criticism, Ceramics: Art and Perception, Eutopia Contemporary Art Reviews, and Exposure Journal. She is a member of AICA–International Association of Art Critics.
She proudly admits to providing her children with years of “therapy” fodder.