Koscielak Gallery:

Susan Sensemann lives and works in Chicago since 1979. Sensemann’s cibachrome photography is a depiction of autobiographical intent that is located in self-portraiture. She is captivated by the most diverse subjects – sculpted Thai vegetables, marble busts of historic figures, Roman wall murals, garden gnomes, as well various statues of the Buddha. Her pictures summon references to disguise, dressing up; she wants to engage with those media, to explore them as signs of self. Sensemann states: “…I merge my face and head with a variety of media I’ve photographed to form something that extends me into an imaginary place. This strategy has allowed me to become a range of characters—from temptress to saint, princess to king, bunny to Bacchus, Buddha to a pathetic garden gnome. I can experiment with decay, disease, beauty, and even glamour without actually living it. ...I’ve been drawn to the idea of the monster, because the monster eludes capture—it's not a fixed entity…It’s a strategy for exploring self in a world that is not self…
Sensemann is an artist, educator, and arts administrator who lives and works in Chicago since 1979. She is a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago and has lectured at institutions in Italy, Germany, Korea, and China as well as at others in this country. Awards include an Illinois Arts Council Visual Artist Fellowship, a MUCIA grant to South Korea, a British Council grant for Belfast, and the Chicago Artists International Program grant to Prague and Turku, Finland. She has curated a number of exhibitions including Tangential Pleasures, Brain/Body, Libidinal, Heat, and Skew: the Unruly Grid. Her photographs and paintings have been exhibited nationally and internationally and are held in numerous private, public, and university collections.