Dorit Cypis

Dorit Cypis is an artist, educator, mediator, and community-builder exploring how history, identity, and social relations inform one another, guided by the question “Who are we to one other?”

Cypis’ production includes performance, photography, sculpture and immersive media installation; curriculum development; civic programs across conflict and differences; publication on identity and social relations. Recent and current projects include I’m Sorry, an immersive landscape installation/performance addressing grief and recognition of causing harm, The Artist in Her Archive, and What is the Color of Whiteness?

Dorit has exhibited internationally: Whitney Museum, Musee des Beaux Art/Bruxelles, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Musee D’Art Contemporaire/ Montreal, Walker Art Center, Orange County Museum of Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Open City Festival/Lublin, Poland, Kestner Gesellerschaft as well as galleries and community cultural centers.

Cypis’ civic programs include: PeoplesLab, consulting, dialogue and transformational skills training on conflict presenting possibility; Mediators Beyond Borders, building local and global capacity for conflict engagement; Kulture Klub Collaborative, artists and home-less youth bridging survival and inspiration to build social change.

Awards include the Guggenheim Fellowship and Rauschenberg Foundation Residency, 2014. Cypis earned a Master of Fine Arts, California Institute for the Arts, and Masters of Dispute Resolution, Pepperdine University. Born in Tel Aviv, Israel, raised in Montreal, she currently lives in Los Angeles.

Overarching praxis statement:

With an artist’s eye for exploring identity and social relations, Dorit Cypis challenges us to deeply question who we are to each other — conceptually, psychologically, and politically. On a whirling planet rife with friction, such an act has become essential. We need new ways to communicate our differences: new methods to connect, common languages to speak, skilled specialists able to shine light into the darkness of human discord and illuminate healing. Our old model of distinct categories separates us. We must activate creativity and critical thinking; bring intuition and empathy into the discussion; navigate and combine our differences. The situation is urgent. Much is at stake.

An activator and a visionary, Dorit Cypis transforms human conflict into constructive discussion, creative expression, and opportunities for greater understanding. Balancing aesthetics with social action, she creates openings in which critical thinking, connection, and transformation can occur.

Whether making art, mediating a disagreement, facilitating dialogue, or, as a consultant, creating programs that spark communication, empower youth, or build community, Cypis draws upon the aesthetic questioning that hums at the core of her creative soul. As art is driven by conflict, she understands that conflict can be resolved through the process that generates art — with its attendant epiphanies and tendency to explode and upend conventional thinking.

Cypis explores, and helps others to explore, how the expression and analysis of conflict can provide a greater understanding of human differences. Her approach is pragmatic and visionary; intuitive and reasoned. Nothing is separate. In everything she does, she begins with the artist’s palette, embracing a creative process that achieves practical ends. In an era darkened by human discord, her methods are more necessary than ever.

Current art and/or research interest:

PeoplesLab, transforming conflict into possibility:

PeoplesLab – Dorit Cypis’ multi-pronged initiative offers procedural, pragmatic and sensorial tools for personal and social change. Drawing on decades of practice in art, conflict mediation, education and social activation, PeoplesLab is designed to help participants uncover the social, physical and psychological blind spots that inhibit honest relations and responsive leadership.

PeoplesLab applies Tools of Engagement – a unique training curriculum developed over decades – to frame identity as a catalyst for equitable and generative action towards justice for all. Key tools include: Somatic Awareness – to experience vulnerability/develop resiliency, Reflexive Skills – to recognize identity, difference, and bias-awareness, Conflict Communication Skills – to build generative engagement. Explore PeoplesLab.us for more information on consulting, training and mediation.