I became very aware of my voice and how it’s almost a sculptural experience – to breathe and project sound into a room
— Susan Philipsz
Turner Prize–winning artist Susan Philipsz explores the psychological, spatial, and sculptural potential of sound. Over the past two decades, she has developed an influential body of work in which voice, architecture, and acoustic space intersect. Engaging the specific acoustic and historical qualities of sites, her works transform space into carriers of memory and affect.
Philipsz often employs unaccompanied voice—frequently her own—alongside musical fragments ranging from sixteenth-century ballads and Irish folk songs to popular music such as David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust. Her selections are never incidental: rather, they respond directly to the context in which they are installed and to the social and architectural histories embedded within it. While each installation is distinct, the narratives she activates are widely recognisable, addressing themes of loss, longing, hope, and return. Her works elicit personal responses while momentarily bridging the individual and the collective, as well as interior and exterior experience.
Born in Glasgow in 1965, Philipsz received a BFA from Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, Dundee, in 1993, and an MFA from the University of Ulster, Belfast, in 1994. She was a PS1 MoMA Studio Fellow in New York in 2000. In 2010 she was awarded the Turner Prize, and in 2014 she was appointed OBE for services to British art.
Since the mid-1990s, Philipsz’s work has been exhibited widely in major museums and public contexts internationally. Recent and notable solo exhibitions include presentations at ARoS Aarhus Art Museum and Kunstmuseum Brandts, Odense (2023); Kunstmuseum Bonn (2021); Castello di Rivoli, Turin (2019); Tate Modern (2018) and Tate Britain (2015), London; Bonniers Konsthall, Stockholm (2017); Kunsthaus Bregenz (2016); and Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin (2014). Her work has also featured in Skulptur Projekte Münster (2007), the Carnegie International (2008), and the National Gallery of Victoria Triennial (2020). She continues to realize significant public and institutional commissions worldwide.
Philipsz’s work is represented in numerous major collections, including the Baltimore Museum of Art; Fondation Beyeler, Basel; Hamburger Kunsthalle; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; Castello di Rivoli, Turin; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC; Museo Reina Sofía, Madrid; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Museum Ludwig, Cologne; SFMOMA, San Francisco; Tate, London; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and the Brooklyn Museum, New York.
Philipsz lives and works in Berlin.