Susan Harbage Page: Embodied Cartography in Territorial Disputes

Harbage Page holds a master’s degree in Photography from the San Francisco Art Institute (2004), a Master’s Degree in Music from Michigan State University (1983), and a certificate of knowledge of the Italian Language, from the Universitá Per Stranieri, Perugia, Italy (1984). Her master’s degree in Saxophone Performance from Michigan State University and engagement with the New Music Ensemble at MSU where she studied the work of John Cage and his theories on chance, indeterminacy, silence, and Buddhism, influence her performative works such as La Ragnatella Rossa Performance (2015), Sewn Border (2014), Erased Border (2015), Erasing the Border Performance (2018-Present), and most recently the video sets for Meredith Monk’s Opera Atlas (2021) about a boy and his dog riding “The Beast” known as the death train north across Mexico to enter the United States. Her work has been widely exhibited internationally include in the U.K, Italy, France, China, Israel, Germany, Bulgaria, and Slovenia, and can be found in the collections of the Baltimore Museum of Art, Maryland; Houston Museum of Fine Art, TX; Israel Museum of Art, Jerusalem, Israel; Nasher Museum of Art, Duke University, Durham, NC; Mint Museum, Charlotte, NC; High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA; and Weatherspoon Museum of Art, University of North Carolina-Greensboro, NC, as well as many others. Amongst Harbage Page’s honors and awards are fellowships from the North Carolina Arts Council, the Camargo Foundation, Bernice Abbott International Competition for Women in Documentary Photography, Academic Excellence Award from the Institute for Arts and Humanities UNC-Chapel Hill, the Carolina Women’s Center Faculty Scholar Award UNC-Chapel Hill, a residency at the McColl Center, and funding from the Andy Warhol Foundation and the Fulbright Program. Seven monographs about her work have been published in conjunction with solo exhibitions. Harbage Page is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Women’s and Gender Studies at UNC-Chapel Hill where she teaches a curriculum that combines hands-on artmaking process with feminist thought and social justice activism. She lives and works in Chapel Hill, NC and Spello, Italy.