In Barham’s work, the squid recurs as a motif through which she examines how texts, surfaces, machines and bodies merge, camouflage, mis-read and transform. It becomes a figure for the porous boundaries between subject and environment, human and machine, meaning and noise. 

Anna Barham (1974, UK) is a London-based artist working between video, sound, writing, installation and live events. Using the written and spoken word as source and material, her work explores how language transforms, and what subjectivities are created as it moves between different bodies and technologies over time. Her current practice-based PhD research is based in experimental writing using speech-2-text, asking what it can tell us about the materiality of the voice.

Her work is represented internationally in public collections that include: TATE, UK; Government Art Collection, London, UK; V&A, London, UK; SFMOMA, San Francisco, US; CGAC, Santiago de Compostela, ES. Recent exhibitions & projects include those at: Tate Modern, London; APRIA Journal, ArtEZ, NL; Whitstable Biennale, Kent; IAC, Villeurbanne, FR; Flat Time House, London; Chelsea Space, London; Index, Stockholm; Quote/Unquote, Bucharest; Site Gallery, Sheffield; MIMA, Middlesbrough; Playground Festival, Museum M, Leuven; Wellcome Collection, London; and K-W, Berlin.