Ilana Halperin (b.1973, New York; lives and works in Glasgow) describes her work as ‘a corporeal exploration of geology’. Her practice is anchored in an early conversation with a seismologist who told her that tectonic plates move at the same rate as our fingernails grow. Since then, she has been driven by a desire to make deep geological time relatable. She combines fieldwork and research with an active studio-based practice. Recent work moves between sculpture, photography, drawing, textile, print, film and narrative.
In the course of her work as an artist, she has celebrated her birthday with a volcano born the same year; boiled milk in a 100 degree Celsius sulphur spring; formed sculptures in caves and hot springs; examined minerals found beneath the streets of New York; spent time with geology collections formed inside the body; and held the Allende Meteorite, the oldest known object in the solar system, in her hands. Her work deals with geological intimacy, vivacity, and the uncanny fact that something as apparently inert and certain as stone was once liquid, airborne, ash and alive.
A mid-career retrospective on Halperin’s work entitled What is Us and What is Earth opened at the Fruitmarket in Edinburgh in February 2026, accompanied by an in-depth monograph. Solo exhibitions include Mount Stuart, Isle of Bute; LÁ Art Museum, Iceland; Cairn Centre d’Art in the UNESCO GeoPark of Haute Provence; The Hunterian, Glasgow; Berliner Medizinhistorisches Museum der Charité; Akiyoshidai Natural History Museum, Japan and Artists Space in New York. Her work has featured in numerous exhibitions worldwide such as – Hollow Earth: Art, Caves and The Subterranean Imaginary, Hayward Touring; A Meeting with Eldfell, Safnahús Vestmannaeyja; The Power of Wonder, Museum unter Tage, Germany; The Forces Behind the Forms, Kunstmuseum Thun, Switzerland; Cristallisations, Centre Pompidou Metz/Musée du Cristal Saint-Louis, France; Sharjah Biennial 8, UAE; Experimental Geography, I.C.I. She was the Inaugural Artist Fellow at National Museums Scotland. Permanent commissions include The Library of Earth Anatomy at The Exploratorium in San Francisco and Chaos Terrain, University of St Andrews. A recent volume on her work entitled Felt Events was published by Strange Attractor Press. Ilana shares her birthday with the Eldfell volcano in Iceland.