Amy Ruhl

USA, b. 1980, Chicago, lives and works in Brooklyn, NY

Amy Ruhl: Other Spaces

Aug 27 - Oct 4

Oregon Contemporary

8371 N Interstate Ave, Portland, OR 97217

Fri – Sun: 12:00 - 5:00 PM

About the Project

Amy Ruhl is a Brooklyn-based artist who reanimates found texts and overlooked figures to probe questions of desire and ideology. For the 2026 C45 Triennial, she presents Other Spaces, an immersive scenographic environment and play that were developed through artist-convened reading groups. Centered on a panoramic video installation, the work is based on the groups’ inquiry into speculative fiction–especially “ambiguous utopias” like the one imagined in Ursula K. Le Guin’s 1974 novel The Dispossessed–as a site of political possibility. Using aspects of role playing games as collage elements, the video presents a settler colonial dystopia so catastrophic it forces a radical new political imagination. The installation will be activated by ensemble performances, led by dancer Lu Yim and actor Sophia Cleary, who navigate a landscape of inflatable sculptures and interactive audio technology to meditate on the labor of building future worlds. The play takes its premise from a minor character in The Dispossessed– Tirin, a theater director who ends up in a “rehabilitation center” after performing an absurdist play.

Artist Bio

Ruhl is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice spans performance, film, moving image, installation, and experimental theater to create deeply collaborative, embodied fictions. Her visual art and films have been exhibited internationally at galleries and institutions including KAJE, Participant Inc, Lubov, Essex Flowers, Storefront for Art and Architecture, and the Anthology Film Archives (New York); Kansas City Art Institute Gallery (Missouri); Vitrine Gallery (London); Public Fiction (Los Angeles); and Pleasure Dome (Toronto). As a performer, she has taken the stage at the Amant Foundation, NYU Skirball Center, Roulette Intermedium, Irondale Theater, The Broad Museum, REDCAT, and the Live Arts Biennial at the Bard Fisher Center.

Her long-term practice has been recognized with a string of major accolades, including being named a finalist for NEFA’s National Theater Project (2021), a Franklin Furnace Fund Award (2023), a Brooklyn Arts Council Grant (2025), and a NYSCA FY2026 award. Looking ahead to 2027, Smack Mellon in Brooklyn will host a solo exhibition dedicated to Between Tin Men, her monumental, 11-year long project.