| Birth Date: | 1982 |
| Birth Place: | Lviv, Ukrainian SSR, Soviet Union (now Ukraine) |
| Alma Mater: | |
| Awards: | Guggenheim Fellow (2021) |
Luba Drozd (born 1982) is an American installation artist.
Drozd was born in 1982 in Lviv, then part of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic,[1] and as an adolescent later emigrated to the United States. Drozd received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Computer Graphics and Interactive Media from Pratt Institute in 2006,[2] then attended the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts, where she earned a Master of Fine Arts degree in Film/Video in 2015.[3] [4]
Drozd's early works were single and two channel animation and video. For Smack Mellon's 2015 show Respond, Drozd contributed Humane Restraint, a video installation which art critic Jillian Steinhauer said "mashes up cheery instructional videos from mental hospitals and police forces that teach viewers how to properly restrain people . . . [and hinges] brilliantly on the point at which humor quietly swings into seriousness."[5] In that same year, she received a new work grant from the Eastern State Penitentiary for a two-channel video installation called Institute of Corrections,[6] and was a BRIC Media Arts Fellow.[7] In 2016, she was a Fall/Winter 2016-2017 artist resident for the Studios at MASS MoCA,[8] and her piece Solipsism was included in CIM, an exhibition of seven contemporary Ukrainian-American Artists.[9] In 2017 she was a Bronx Museum of the Arts AIM Fellow,[10] with her installation piece subsequently included in that year's Bronx Museum Biennial.[11] In 2017, Drozd had a solo show at Lubov (a gallery in Manhattan), called Soon enough Roads will be Rivers.[12]
In 2018, Drozd received residencies at the Millay Colony for the Arts and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts[13] and exhibited within a group show at the Pfizer Building in Brooklyn.[14] In 2019 Drozd received a MacDowell Colony Fellowship,[15] and she and William Lamson worked on A Continuous Stream of Occurrence, an exhibition at the Knockdown Center.[16] Her subsequent piece Tarsainn received support from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts through their emergency grant program.[17] In late-2019, Drozd created a site specific piece at Sunview Luncheonette.[18] In 2020, Drozd received a Yaddo residency.[19] That same year, she also worked as part of A faint hum, a group installation at the Hessel Museum of Art.[20] Rachel Vera Steinberg said that "Using piano strings, animated projection, sheet metal, micro-controllers, motors, and drywall, Drozd’s new installation yearns for a synesthetic equalization of matter."
During the COVID-19 pandemic in New York City, Drozd distributed 3D-printed face shields, based on a design by Prusa Research (the manufacturers of the Prusa i3 3D printers).[21] The shields were designed to be "fabricated with acetate, a hole puncher from a discount store, and rubber bands".[21] On March 30, 2020, a photograph of Drozd creating the masks appeared in a New York Times article on the rise of crowdsourced medical equipment during the pandemic.[22] In May 2020, Drozd told arts magazine Bomb that "[m]uch of [her] art practice deals with the subjectivity of perception on both micro and macro levels." In 2021, Drozd was appointed a Guggenheim Fellow.[23]
On February 24, 2022, Drozd, condemning the Russian invasion of Ukraine, took part in an anti-invasion march in Manhattan.[24] She has family who remained in Ukraine after her emigration, and she wanted them to flee the country for their safety.[24] She also voiced her "doubts [that] domestic and international pressure would deter [President of Russia [[Vladimir Putin|Vladimir] Putin]] from pursuing his plan to take over Ukraine."[24] In November 2022, she returned to Smack Mellon with The Tenacity of a Fluid Trace, an art installation incorporating drywall, piano wire, sheet metal, and steel beams to produce sound.[25] Gregory Volk said that he "would hardly characterize [it] as a direct response to the war, yet correspondences are evident, especially in her deep feeling and respect for matter, in contrast with Putin’s senseless destruction."[25]