(b. 1993, Chicago, Illinois) is a Chicago-based visual artist who transforms rope, industrial textiles, and photographic imagery into large-scale sculptural reliefs and woven environments. Through knotting, weaving, wrapping, and accumulation, Surdell translates the language of landscape painting into tactile, architectural form. Knotted cords become marks, woven passages function like brushwork, and exposed warp acts as both compositional structure and support.
Surdell’s work draws on ecological networks, transportation routes, maps, waterways, and shifting terrains, often beginning with collaged imagery of landscapes and industrial infrastructure. This interest is rooted in her family’s history on Chicago’s Southeast Side, including her grandfather’s work at Republic Steel and the city’s identity as a center of transportation, industry, and exchange. Her woven forms are increasingly suspended from steel rods and custom armatures, creating a material dialogue between Chicago’s industrial history and contemporary landscapes and systems of labor, extraction, and care.
Surdell holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a BA from Occidental College. She has presented solo exhibitions with SECRIST | BEACH, including a solo booth at the 2025 Armory Show, covered by The New York Times, and The Conversion: Rings, Rupture, and the Forest Archive. Her work has been exhibited at institutions including Fondation Thalie, Kunsthal KAdE, and the Abroms-Engel Institute for the Visual Arts. A recipient of a DCASE Individual Artist Grant and Pollock-Krasner Foundation Fellowship in Sculpture, Surdell begins a year-long residency at Silver Art Projects in New York in 2026.
