Samantha M Connors

Website:

samanthamconnors.com

About:

Samantha M Connors is an artist, cultural worker, and abolitionist in Philadelphia. Samantha’s practice focuses on the cyclical disposability of people and objects in the United States by those in power, particularly focused on how these goals are accomplished through gentrification, displacement, and infrastructure failure. Their work lives both in the studio and in collaborative spaces - flowing between research, documentation, creating sculptural drawings, attending too many meetings, curatorial projects, and in partnership with other people committed to liberation. In 2014, they graduated from Tyler School of Art and have completed 5 artist residencies in the Northeast US and France. Their practice is rooted in their dual homes of Kensington and South Philly. Since 2021, Samantha has served as the Executive Director of Da Vinci Art Alliance, an intergenerational artist collective.

Artist Statement:

“Every building is a political artifact, shaped by the values, priorities, and power structures present at the time of its construction. In Philadelphia, specifically in Kensington, the city contains visible traces of our industrial and working-class past while increasingly accomodating infrastructure designed for new, higher-income residents. These physical changes represent decisions about whose lives are valued and whose are displaced.

Through research, attending zoning and neighborhood meetings, photographic documentation, and material exploration, I investigate how redevelopment produces disruption, displacement, and distrust within communities. My work centers the lived impact of these changes, tracing the role of developers and political actors in reshaping neighborhoods, using the landscape itself as evidence of power, exclusion, and resistance.”