Bio
Sophia Oppel is an interdisciplinary artist, educator, and researcher based in Toronto, Canada. Oppel’s art practice deploys transparent substrates (glass, mirror, the screen), paired with 3D rendered imagery as a framework to consider the paradoxes of legibility under surveillance capitalism. Currently, Oppel is interested in addressing both the complicity with, and refusal of, biometric capture on a bodily scale by misusing operational imaging technologies. Oppel’s doctoral research takes a feminist approach to surveillance studies and examines data extraction technologies as sites of biopolitical control through a research-creation framework. Central to this research is a close examination of technologies which dataify and (re)image the body, including biometric and photogrammetric technologies and 3D scanning and rendering technologies, which increasingly export the content of our collective cultural imaginary.
Oppel has exhibited locally and internationally, including exhibitions with the CAFKA Biennial (Kitchener), Ed Video (Guelph), Blouin/Division (Toronto), InterAccess (Toronto), Queen Specific (Toronto), Gallery TPW (Toronto), Bunker 2 (Toronto), Society for Arts and Technology (Montreal), The Plumb (Toronto) and Xpace Cultural Center (Toronto), Supermarket Art Fair (Stockholm, Sweden), and site-specific projects in Tokyo, Japan and Istanbul, Turkey.
Oppel is a Sessional Instructor at OCAD University’s Fine Art Department.
Specialization
New Media Art, Media Studies, Surveillance Studies, Feminist methodologies, Research-Creation
Degrees
2021 Master of Visual Studies, University of Toronto: Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design
2018 Bachelor of Fine Art, Ontario College of Art and Design: Faculty of Fine Art