Julia Weist is a visual artist who explores how the process of record keeping reveals crucial social truths around shared systems of knowledge and power. In our conversation, Weist talks about her interest in how non-artists document their lived experiences, shares her experience as an artist in residence within city government, and considers the nature of public space and digital space, all illustrated by some of the phenomenal project work that Weist has created.

Her work is in the permanent collection of the City of New York, the Museum of Modern Art, the Brooklyn Museum and the MIT List Visual Art Center among other collections. Weist’s public artworks include Public Record (2020, New York City), View-Through (2017, Miami) and Reach (2015, Queens). Her work has recently been exhibited at the Queens Museum, New York; the Hong-Gah Museum, Taiwan; The Luminary, St. Louis; The Shed, New York; nGbK, Berlin; Kunstinstituut Melly, Rotterdam; the Gwangju Biennale and many other venues. She is the recipient of a Camargo Foundation Fellowship, a Jerome Foundation Fellowship, the Net-based Audience Prize from Haus Der Elektronischen Künste Basel and grants from the New York State Council on the Arts and the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs. In 2019 she was named Public Artist in Residence for New York City’s Department of Records and Information Services.