Artist in Residence, Stockholm, November 2026–February 2027

Aliza Shvarts is an artist, writer, and scholar living between Chicago and New York. Using performance, video and installation, she creates narrative, material, and spatial interventions that often rely on social interactions, ephemeral gestures, and speech or bodily acts. Her work takes a queer and feminist approach to reproductive labor and language, exploring how a body, image, concept, or discourse comes into being—as well as the historical and ideological conditions that discipline them. Recently, Shvarts’ work has focused on testimony. She is interested in whose words carry weight, whose speech precipitates action, whose bodies bear assurances of trustworthiness, and whose incite doubt.

Photo: Luciana McClure

Aliza Shvarts

While in residence at IASPIS, Shvarts will be working on a book manuscript based on her artistic research into “rape kits,” which are forensic objects used to collect evidence after a sexual assault. She will also be conducting research into Swedish “Trojaborgs” or labyrinths—spatial experiences where there are no choices to make, only a path to follow. This will be material for a new body of work, which posits the labyrinth as a device for navigating contemporary conditions of choiceless-ness.

Shvarts is currently Director of the Low-Residency MFA Program and Associate Professor of Performance at School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC). Recent exhibitions include When Thoughts Are Free, New York (2026), Disconsent: Faith, Los Angeles (2024), and An imagination of Total Boldily Autonomy, Berlin (2023). Recent publications include “Representing Roe: Reproductive Justice Under Threat,” Art in America (2025) and “A practice centered on repair can pull in two directions,” Places Journal (2024). Her work was also recently named on the list of “100 Best Artworks of the 21^st Century” by Artnews (2025).

Website address: alizashvarts.com