A pioneer in the development of new media art practices, Sonya Rapoport formed a distinct visual language that appropriated the aesthetics of scientific graphs and representations of data. Though she started her prolific career as an abstract painter, Rapoport (1923–2015) created information‐dense paintings, drawings, collage, interactive performances, and net-based art.  Informed by chemistry, botany, religion, language, psychology, and technology, her practice was deeply associative and constantly changing, with each work producing material for the next. Curious to engage—often with humor—new input and information, Rapoport described her methodology as “quantifying qualitative information.” Sonya Rapoport:  biorhythm focuses on a decade of rapid transformation in the artist’s practice—from her solo exhibition at SJMA in 1974 to her computer‐assisted interactive performances of the mid‐1980s.

Starting in the early 1970s, Rapoport made extensive use of a personal lexicon of feminine symbols, creating stencils from a collection of found shapes that resembled reproductive anatomy. Using spray acrylic and graphite, the artist superimposed her iconography about gender and motherhood on repurposed scientific charts and discarded computer printouts, eventually adapting these technical symbols into large‐scale paintings.

The production of personal computers in the late 1970s gave Rapoport the opportunity to directly engage computers in her work. She began the five‐year project Biorhythm (1980–84), collecting and analyzing personal data through self‐assessment and technology‐based calculation. By 1984, the artist presciently imagined a future in which we consult computers to assess how we feel.

Working at the intersection of art, science, and technology, Rapoport grappled with what she considered the ritualistic symbols of our technological age. Charting the transition from abstract painting to conceptual computer‐based work, the exhibition considers the aesthetic and cultural implications of the artist’s exploration of computer‐collected and ‐analyzed personal data.

Sonya Rapoport: biorhythm is organized by Kathryn Wade, assistant curator, with research assistance from Jessica Kwong, 2019 AAMD Intern.

All artworks in the exhibition by Sonya Rapoport.