Composite portrait. Original photo by Zoe Cinel.
Compelled by a bilateral relationship with invisibility wrought by an ongoing undiagnosed illness and a decade+ of visual effects experience making things disappear, Ryan Woodring (he/they) creates sustained agency for unpredictable and illegible modes of being via experimental, time-based practice. Woodring earned his MFA from Rutgers University and is currently Assistant Teaching Professor of Digital Media at Drew University, New Jersey. Pedagogy provides a guide for reciprocity and collaborative research within Woodring’s practice. In 2025, he founded the Soft Data/Base, an interactive archive compiling artist projects that generate soft data for ineffable experience, and developed a touring drawing workshop in conjunction with his recently published coloring book “Sick and Tired at the Met” (Irrelevant Press 2025). Woodring co-founded Prequel, a free low-residency program in Portland, Oregon that generated numerous enduring mentor-based relationships, and is a current member of Blockbusters Video Collective, New York. Woodring has exhibited and spoken internationally in various contexts such as The Museum of the Moving Image, Rochester Art Center, Sunaparanta Goa Centre for the Arts, The International Museum of Surgical Science, Portland Biennial, and elsewhere, receiving project support from the The Andy Warhol Foundation, Regional Arts & Culture Council of Oregon, Institute of Network Cultures, and others. His work has been included in publications such as Hyperallergic, Interview Magazine, and Redefine Magazine. In 2025, he delivered a talk at the Mayo Clinic titled Rendering Illness: Artistic Practice at the Boundaries of Diagnosis and recently published a peer-reviewed essay on navigating undiagnosed illness via artistic practice in the International Journal of Education in the Arts. Woodring lives and naps in Queens, NY.
- Viewable/Downloadable CV Link
- contact at ryanwoodring dot com