Peter Christenson (USA) is an interform conceptualist who works across media, platforms, and environments. He has dressed as a tomato and two-stepped through rural America, dug holes in the earth and dropped cameras into the darkness, been shot at by paintballs to explore gun violence and reform, made films to question sycophantic fandom, staged a cosplay march to raise funding for a youth shelter, collaborated with disabled activists to explore infrastructure and transit accessibility, designed robots that paint in his blood, photographed people photographing themselves, and tailored apps to track, map, and promote the removal of litter.
As an artist, activist, and social worker trained in psychotherapy, Christenson often uses the moniker PSYCHOLOGARTIST to highlight the interdisciplinary, socially-engaged, and interventionist nature of his practice, regularly classifying projects with a specific diagnostic code from the "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders," a widely accepted instrument for psychiatric diagnosis. These psychiatric-coded art projects satirically critique the institutions of both Art and Psychiatry, but ironically have also come to serve as psychosocial case studies of self and community, and eccentric explorations into pathology, breakthrough, and the human condition.
As an artist, activist, and social worker trained in psychotherapy, Christenson often uses the moniker PSYCHOLOGARTIST to highlight the interdisciplinary, socially-engaged, and interventionist nature of his practice, regularly classifying projects with a specific diagnostic code from the "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders," a widely accepted instrument for psychiatric diagnosis. These psychiatric-coded art projects satirically critique the institutions of both Art and Psychiatry, but ironically have also come to serve as psychosocial case studies of self and community, and eccentric explorations into pathology, breakthrough, and the human condition.
Christenson has lectured, screened and exhibited his work broadly across the globe. He is the recipient of a number of awards including a US-UK Fulbright Scholar Award in Art & Design and the Governor's Arts & Heritage Young Arts Leader Award for the state of Washington. He is currently a psycho-babbling and moderately medicated Professor of Art at Washington State University, where you'll most likely find him dancing and/or crying in his office.
