Sila Ulug

Biography

Sila Ulug is a joint-PhD candidate in Art History & Theater and Performance Studies at the University of Chicago. Her dissertation addresses “the” history of twenty-first century performance practices as they are informed by intersecting histories of security and conservation protocols within art institutional spaces, as they took form in the nineteenth- and twentieth centuries through regulatory dialogue anchored in shifting indexes of material “atmosphere” and sociopolitical climate. She grounds her scholarship in performance-based methodologies of inquiry, analysis, presentation that take critical disability studies and its intersectional reach as their foundation.

Sila received her BA in Art History, Sociology, and English Literature from Hunter College (CUNY), where she also earned a minor in Philosophy and pursued a “mini concentration” in vocal performance, within the purview of the interdisciplinary Thomas Hunter Honors Program. She concomitantly contributed to exhibitions, productions, and programming at arts non-profits based in New York City, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Studio Museum of Harlem, and Performa.

Sila is co-enrolled as a Doctoral Exchange Scholar in the Department of Art, Film, and Visual Studies at Harvard University, for the 2023–24 academic year.