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Roxane Permar (b. 1952, Philadelphia, USA) is an artist who has worked in the field of public art and socially engaged practice for over 20 years. She works in response to issues of location, history and community, using a variety of media, including film, textiles, sound, live event and social exchange to realise projects, events and sculptural installations. Her work often employs creative collaboration, networking and participation. The materials and technologies she uses vary with each project and depend on each context and situation. Gift-giving and exchange have formed an important element in her practice since the mid-1990s.

Permar was born in America and grew up in Pittsburgh. Her career has been based in the UK, where she lived and worked in London for twenty three years before moving to Scotland in 1998. While the context of her adopted Shetland home has played an important influence on her work, her practice is situated locally, nationally and internationally. She has realised projects, undertaken commissions and exhibited in England, Scotland, Russia, Germany, France, Ireland, Azerbaijan, Philadelphia, Japan, Denmark, Scandinavia and Australia.

Early Career in London
In the 1980s she was a member of the Brixton Artists Collective in London where she was an active participant in Women's Work. Her on-going series, The Nuclear Family (1984-1990), was hugely influenced by the political and cultural context of London at this time.

Russia
Permar has had continued involvement with Russia and Russian culture since her first visit in 1973. She worked for The Society for Cultural Relations with the USSR (founded 1924, London) for seven years, and during the 1980s she translated the the book, Russian and Soviet Theatre: Tradition and the Avant-Garde, by Constantin Rudnitsky. In l985 she was a cultural delegate to the World Youth Festival in Moscow where she exhibited her Nuclear Family. In more recent years she has exhibited frequently in St Petersburg. She co-initiated the emplacements project (1997-2003) with Francoise Dupré, working with artists from the UK, Western Europe and Russia to stage events in London and St Petersburg, culminating in temporary public art events throughout St Petersburg in 2003. the emplacements project at New Holland in 2000 is significant for opening the grounds to the general public for the first time in the city's history. For the International Festival of Experimental Art in St Petersburg in 2008 she invited people from various parts of the world, including Shetland, to participate in an exchange of films made on mobile phones, Swap Shots. Edited versions have been exhibited in Russia, Denmark and Shetland. Permar presented a paper about the project at isea2009 in Belfast.

Shetland
Permar has been involved with Shetland since 1985 when she began to visit regularly before settling in Burra Isle permanently in late 2000. Much of her work is deeply engaged with Shetland culture and land. In 1990 she worked with Susan Timmins to create the public art project, The Nuclear Roadshow, and from 1992-95 she worked with Wilma Johnson on The Croft Cosy Project. Cairn was an installation realised in 1990 from drawings she had produced in Shetland between 1985 and 1989. Since 2001 she has worked with young people in Shetland through a variety of special projects, largely focussing on the use of digital media, including Fishtastic: The Scalloway Moving Image Project; The Sonic Postcards Project for the Sonic Arts Network and Shetlands' Cauld Waaters (2001-02) commissioned by Scottish Natural Heritage. She is a founder member of Veer North, Shetland's Visual Artists group. She created Come and Go (2007, Soundtrack, David Sjoberg), a film for the permanent displays in the new Shetland Museum and Archives. In 2007 she and Susan Timmins created Domestic Dialogues, a collaborative project linking Shetland and St Petersburg, Russia through dialogue, gift-giving and exchange. In 2006 her project, Roseland, combined installation, gift-giving and exchange through exhibitions and events in Shetland, Roydon (near London) and Düsseldorf.

Underwater Exploration
In 2000 she began investigating the relationship between technology and underwater exploration through a Scotland Year of the Artist Residency at Haliburton Subsea in Aberdeen where she lived for three years. Through the Moonpool came out of this residency and culminated in a body of work exhibited at The Aberdeen Maritime Museum (2001) and the Shetland Museum (2002). The film, Through the Moonpool, was exhibited in Crossover UK in 2003 and again in Japan in 2005. For Crossover UK 2004 she exhibited The Webnitki, a collection of animations made for the Internet at a Lab Culture residency. The webnitki, are characters who 'knit' their way across the world's continents, 'threading' their way across time and space, land, sea and 'through the moonpool'. The work reflects urban and rural environments, drawing on subject matter related to Permar's experience of living and working in diverse cultures. She invented the word 'webnitki' by combining the English word 'web' with the Russian word 'nitki', meaning 'threads'.

Participation and Temporary Public Art
Participation and temporary public art projects have been an on-going concern in Permar's practice. Major commissions include Echolalia's Walsall Archive (The New Art Gallery Walsall, 2000-01), 1,100 Rosebuds (Newlyn Art Gallery, Cornwall, 2004), Park Matters (London, 2004), Blueprints, (Newlyn Art Gallery 2005-07). Mirrie Dancers is a public art project conceived in collaboration with Nayan Kulkarni using the medium of light and commissioned by Shetland Arts Development Agency for Mareel, Shetland's new music, cinema and education venue. In this project Permar continues the work with Shetland knitting she began with The Croft Cosy Project in the early 1990s through collaboration with Shetland Lace knitters.

Teaching and Community Education
Throughout her career Permar has worked in art education and displayed a firm commitment to integrating processes for learning and teaching into her artwork. She has been a lecturer and visiting tutor at colleges throughout the UK, including Central St Martin’s College of Art and Design in London, Birmingham City University (formerly University of Central England) and Gray’s School of Art, Aberdeen, Scotland, as well as working in schools, community and art gallery education. She has visited art colleges in Russia and the USA. Currently she teaches on the BA Contemporary Textiles course at Shetland College UHI (University of the Highlands and Islands).