Ilana Halperin

Ilana Halperin (born 1973) is an artist with an interest in the relationships between geological phenomena and daily life. Her artwork is produced using a variety of media, writing, performance, printmaking, sculpture, drawing, and film. She lives and works in Glasgow, Scotland.

Life and education

Halperin was born in 1973 in Manhattan, New York. She grew up near the Bowery neighborhood. Halperin attended the New York High School of Performing Arts (famously known as the setting for the 1980 film Fame), and trained as a stone carver. She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts from Brown University in 1995, before moving to Scotland to study the Master of Fine Art course at the Glasgow School of Art, from where she graduated in 2000.

Halperin's work is predominantly focused around connections between geological time and human time. She conducts fieldwork with specialists worldwide, including mineralogists, geologists, vulcanologists and archaeologists, and creates her work by placing herself or others directly in geologically significant or active locations.

Awards Creative Scotland Artist Award