Esther Choi (The Cooper Union), “Double Negatives: On Pictures and Petroaesthetics” (Yale School of Architecture)

 

Esther Choi is a multidisciplinary artist and scholar trained in photography and architectural history. Her work explores how concepts of nature—and, by extension, ideas about “normality”—have been shaped by modern worldmaking practices in the Global North. Choi’s artistic practice and research draw from art and architectural history, decolonial and postcolonial theory, critical environmental studies, and feminist science and technology studies.

 

In addition to her photographic and time-based work, Choi is the creator of dialogue-based, socially engaged artworks involving a global network of creative practitioners who identify as Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour. These include Office Hours (2020–), a knowledge-sharing project for BIPOC cultural producers, and Public Service (2023-), a webzine featuring notable BIPOC artists, scholars, and designers in conversations about catalyzing social change in the culture industries and beyond. She is the founder and series editor of the forthcoming publishing platform Thought Forms, an imprint in partnership with Park Books, dedicated to amplifying BIPOC scholars’ and practitioners’ re-envisioning of the built and managed environments.

 

Her Fluxus-inspired conceptual cookbook Le Corbuffet (Prestel, 2019), was nominated for a James Beard Foundation Award in Photography in 2020.

 

Choi’s photographic commissions have appeared in publications such as T: The New York Times Style Magazine, Dazed and Confused, Vice, Le Monde, AnOther Magazine, AnOther Man, T: Japan, T: Australia, T: China, Elle Decor, and The New York Times Magazine.

 

Choi’s work and scholarship have been published in Art Papers, Harvard Design Magazine, and e-flux, in addition to edited volumes and exhibition catalogs. She is the co-editor of Architecture at the Edge of Everything Else (MIT Press, 2010) and Architecture Is All Over (Columbia U, 2017). Her work has received recognition and support from The Ford Foundation, Canada Council for the Arts, Social Sciences Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Richard Rogers Fellowship, James Beard Foundation, Princeton University, Harvard University, The Getty Foundation, The Graham Foundation, Society of Architectural Historians, and Canadian Centre for Architecture, among others.

 

Choi was an Assistant Professor of Photography and Criticism and Curatorial Practice at OCAD University from 2008–2016. She has taught at The Cooper Union since 2016. In 2022, she was a Getty/ACLS Postdoctoral Fellow in the History of Art. She is currently at work on a manuscript based on her award-winning dissertation.

 

Choi holds a joint Ph.D. in Architectural History and Interdisciplinary Humanities (Princeton University), an MDes in Architectural History (Harvard University), an MFA in Photography (Concordia University), and a BFA in Photography (Toronto Metropolitan University).