Sophia Wang

Sophia Wang is an artist, writer, and founder in the fields of biotechnology, art, and education. She makes and performs movement-based works in collaboration with performance artists, writers, filmmakers, and visual and sound artists.

She earned a Ph.D. in English from U.C. Berkeley and integrates her research and performance practices through writing and curatorial projects focused on critical somatics: thinking with and as bodies. Since 2015, she has co-produced Heavy Breathing, a discussion and movement workshop series that has featured over 30 presenting artists working at the intersection of performance, visual and sound arts, and pedagogy. She is the co-founder of MycoWorks, a biotechnology company, and the co-founder of the Brontez Purnell Dance Company, which has presented experimental dance works in the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond since 2009.

Wang’s works have been presented by the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley, CA; SFMOMA, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, the Lab and Southern Exposure, San Francisco, CA; the Broad Museum, Los Angeles, CA; the Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, MI; and the Montreal Pop Festival, Montreal, Québec. She has danced for artists Xavier le Roy, Tino Sehgal, Jérôme Bel, Xandra Ibarra, and Amara Tabor-Smith. She has been granted residencies by the Taipei Artist Village (2018) and 356 Mission (2018), and commissions and grants from Southern Exposure Alternative Exposure, the Merce Cunningham Trust, and Hope Mohr Dance’s Bridge Project. She is one of Entrepreneur’s 100 Powerful Women in 2021.

www.heavyheavybreathing.com

Portrait by Carla Tramullas.