Shelly Silver

born 1957 in New York

She received a BA and BFA from Cornell University and subsequently attended the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program. Silver has held artist residencies with the DAAD Artist-in-Residence Program in Berlin, the Japan/US Creative Arts Fellowship Program in Tokyo and the Cité Internationale des Arts (through the National Endowment for the Arts and the American Center) in Paris. Silver has received numerous fellowships and grants including from the NEA, NYSCA, NYFA, the Jerome Foundation, Anonymous Was a Woman Foundation and the Checkerboard Foundation. In 2005 she was John Simon Guggenheim Fellow.

She currently lives in New York, where she teaches at The Cooper Union and in the MFA Program of Photography and Related Media at the School of Visual Arts.

Her work (video, film, internet and installations) spans a wide range of subject matter and genres and explores notions of authenticity and fiction; the multifarious relations that connect and restrict us; the tortuous routes of pleasure and desire; the stories that are told about us and the stories we construct about ourselves. She has been exhibited throughout the US, Europe and Asia at venues such as MoMA, NYC, MoCA, LA, The Pompidou Center, Paris; The Kyoto Museum, Japan, The ICA London, The London Film Festival, The Singapore Film Festival and has won many awards including at The Leipzig International Documentary Festival, The Australian Int'l Film & Video Festival and The Houston Int'l Film Festival.

in distribution

5 lessons and 9 questions about Chintatown, 2009

What I'm Looking For, Video/Installation 2004

Suicide, 2003

1, 2001

small lies, Big Truth, 1999

37 Stories About Leaving Home, 1996

Former East/Former West, 1994

The Houses That Are Left, 1991

The Houses That Are Left (trailer), 1989

We, 1990

Things I Forget to Tell Myself, 1989

getting in, 1989

Meet the People, 1986