Julia Christensen is an artist, musician, writer, and educator whose work explores systems of time, change, landscape, and technology. Her interdisciplinary projects have exhibited at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Walker Art Center, Eyebeam, Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland, Carnegie Museum of Art, and internationally in France, India, Greece, Finland, and beyond. Christensen has been named a fellow by Creative Capital (2013), LACMA Art + Tech Lab (2017), and the Guggenheim Foundation (2018). She has received additional funding from the Ohio Arts Council and the New York State Council on the Arts, and has been an artist-in-residence at the MacDowell Colony, Media Archaeology Lab , Wexner Center Film + Media Studio, Experimental Television Center, and the Fulcrum Art and Science Incubator.
Christensen is the President of the Space Song Foundation, a non-profit she founded with visionary scientists and engineers to cultivate long-term thinking at the intersection of art, science, and design for applications in outer space. She is the author of Big Box Reuse (MIT Press, 2008), a book about her work documenting civic and community-driven reclamations of abandoned Walmart and K-Mart buildings in the United States. Christensen’s second book, Upgrade Available (Dancing Foxes, 2020), follows the artist’s years-long exploration into “upgrade culture,” tracing technology’s impacts on how we experience space and time. Her writing has additionally appeared in numerous publications including Cabinet, Architect Magazine, Print, Slate, and Hyperallergic. She has been invited to speak about her projects at Yale University, CalTech, Carnegie Mellon, the National Arts Club, IdeaFestival, Dreamworks Studios, and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab.
Christensen is the Eva and John Youg-Hunter Professor of Art at Oberlin College, where she is also the founder and director of the dual degree BA/BFA in Integrated Arts. She previously taught at Stanford University, California College of the Arts, and Pratt Institute. She is an alum of Bard College, Mills College, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and Interlochen Arts Academy. Christensen is a board member of the Center for Land Use Interpretation in Culver City, CA.