Susan Hiller, pioneer of Paraconceptualism, dies at 78

Susan Hiller, the American-born artist who coined the term Paraconceptualism to describe her investigations into the irrational and systematic forces shaping society and the psyche, died on January 28, 2019, in London at age 78. Born in 1940 in Tallahassee, Florida, she moved to London in the 1960s and lived there for five decades. Her early studies included film and photography at the Cooper Union and linguistics and archaeology at Hunter College in New York. A fieldwork grant took her to Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize for anthropological research, but a lecture on African art prompted her to abandon academia for art. Hiller's practice spanned video, performance, photography, installation, and writing. Key works include 'Sisters of Menon' (1972–1979) on automatic writing, 'Witness' (2000) and 'Belshazzar's Feast' (1983–84) on paranormal activity, and 'J Street Project' (2002–05) and 'The Last Silent Movie' (2007) on language's limits. She told Artforum in 2017, 'I like being in the middle of the vortex, showing what's out there and what is denied.' Her works are held by the Centre Pompidou, Tate Gallery, Victoria and Albert Museum, Israel Museum, Moderna Museet, National Gallery of Art South Australia, and Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography. Major exhibitions include 'Susan Hiller: Paraconceptual' at Lisson Gallery London (2017), a 2011 retrospective at Tate Britain, and her last Italian show at OGR Turin (2018), curated by Barbara Casavecchia.