Dolly Sen
About
DOLLY SEN is an award-winning writer, artist, performer and filmmaker. She has had 10 books published, been nominated twice for a Dadafest Literary Award (2006 & 2007), and won several awards for her poetry. Her subversive blogs around art, disability and humour have a huge international following. Since 2004 she has exhibited and performed internationally. Her most recent projects have been a digitally commissioned work for Short Circuit and the Brighton Digital Festival, where she gave an ordinary website a psychotic episode and changed its programming forever, and the creation of the popular Madvent Calender for Christmas 2014.
As a child, Dolly Sen was an alien in Empire Strikes Back. She knew then she would never know normal life. Her journey as an artist has taken her up a tree in Regents Park, to California’s Death Row, to the Barbican, Tower Bridge and the Royal Academy, Trafalgar Square, and up a ladder to screw a lightbulb into the sky, using words, art, film and performance. She is interested in non-consensual reality, outsidership, empathy, authenticity and absurdity. She has been labeled ‘mad’ by society. Her work aims to show she makes perfect sense. To that end, I want to disrupt systems that produce ‘copy and paste’ identities/thoughts/perceptions/life/death, as a Trojan horse dressed as a my little pony on acid with a little sadness in their hearts. My anti-virus programme is my art and creativity, it is putting sanity over my lap and smacking its naughty bum bum.
1970 Born London, UK
2010 BA (hons) Film & TV,University of Arts
London, London (1st Class honours)
2012 Sync Creative Leadership Programme
Graduate
EXHIBITIONS
2004 Deconstructed: Reconstructed, South London Gallery
2005 Her Noise, South London Gallery
2006 Talking Lampposts, Bonkerfest, London
2010 SidAction Exhibition, Boulogne-sur-Mer, France
2012 Within Without You, Bath Fringe Festival
2012 Tight Modern, UK (touring)
2012 Perceptions of Balance – Shape Arts – London
2013 Impact Arts Fair – Block 336 – London
2014 Art at the Bridge – Tower Bridge – London
2014 You are not Alone Exhibition, Stoke Newington Gallery, London
2014 Exhibit Here Summer Exhibition, 59 London Wall, London
2014 Who’s Self Portrait, SHARP, London
2014 A letter in Mind, National Brain Appeal, Oxo Tower, London
2014 [In]visible, Shape Gallery, London
2015 Around the Kitchen Table, Bethlem Gallery, London
2016 Letting in the Light, Stratford, London.
2016 VI Comtemporary Art Bienale, Madrid
2017 ShapeOpen ‘Power: The Politics of Disability’, London
2017 Em-Re-Un – Bohemian Agenda, Norwich
2017 Modern Panic VIII – Guerilla Zoo, London
2017 EUFAMI Exhibition – PsychArt Gallery, Brussels
2018 Pride with Prejudice – St Margarets Church of Art, Norwich
2018 My Future Likes – Bethlem Gallery, London
FILM FESTIVALS
2003 TVAK, Amsterdam
2006 Streatham Film Festival
2006 Bonkersfest Film Festival
2006 Southwark TV Film Festival
2007 Borderlines Film Festival
2007 Movie Monday, Kent
2008 Cannes in a Van, Cannes
2012 Portobello Film Festival
2013 Cinema and Psychosis, Barbican
2014 Mind Rights Film Festival, Lisbon, Portugal
2014 Together Disability Film Festival, London
2014 Shuffle Film Festival, London
2014 Picture This, Canada
2015 Acting Out, Notthingham
2015 Medfest (various)
RESIDENCIES & COMMISSIONS
2010 AA2A Residency, University of Portsmouth, Art, Design and Media Department, 2011-12
2012 Sync – Subversive Powerpoint
2012 Pallant House Gallery/Step Up Audio Trail.
2013 Barbican – Wonder on Film
2013 DAO & Royal Academy
2013 Brighton Digital Festival/Short Circuit
2015 Bobby Baker – Expert View
Gallery
DEAR CCTV CAMERA (2017)
A poem to a CCTV Camera, asking it to look at itself.
BROKEN BRAIN OR BROKEN HEART? (2015)
I made this film to juxtapose my childhood photos with the psychotic voices I hear to see if I can see myself as a child.
THIS FILM DOESN’T EXIST (2013)