The Evidence of Absence, 2015 Photograph

David Birkin is a British-born artist based in New York and London. He studied at Oxford University, the Slade School of Fine Art, and was a fellow on the Whitney Museum's Independent Study Program. Past projects have included a collaboration with the courtroom sketch artist at Guantanamo, a visual rendering of identification numbers from the Iraqi civilian casualty database, and skywriting an extract of CIA legalese above Manhattan. Birkin has written for publications including Creative Time Reports, Cabinet Magazine, Ibraaz, the ACLU, and the Harvard Advocate, and was an artist-in-residence at Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony, the Art & Law Program, and Lower Manhattan Cultural Council's studios on Governors Island. He has exhibited internationally at the Courtauld Institute, Photographers’ Gallery, Saatchi Gallery, HotShoe, Cøpperfield, and Trolly Books, London; Baibakov Art Projects and the Solyanka State Gallery, Moscow; Photomonth, Krakow; the Kunstihoone, Tallinn; the Benaki Museum, Athens; Centre d'Art et Photographie, Lectoure; MUDAM Museum of Modern Art, Luxembourg; FotoFest, Houston; and the Whitney ISP, New York. His solo exhibition Mouths at the Invisible Event opened in 2015 at The Mosaic Rooms, London. Birkin was the recipient of a 2009 National Media Museum bursary, the 2010 Sovereign European Art Prize (Barbican, London), an AHRC scholarship in 2011, and the 2012 Celeste Art Prize (Museo Centrale Montemartini, Rome). He has performed in films by Nathaniel Mellors for the ICA, Tate Triennial, British Art Show, Hayward Gallery, Venice Biennale and Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, and narrated the English translation of Chris Marker and Alan Resnais"˜ 1953 film Les statues meurent aussi at the French Institute in London. He was talks coordinator for the London based non-profit Speakers' Society, and previously photographed reportage assignments on issues ranging from the founding of Afghan Film and the training of female journalists in Kabul to conscientious objectors during the Israel-Lebanon War.