Sunday, February 25, 2024, 7pm to 8.15pm UK time (Please check your own time zone).

The ISSS invites you to a dialogue between Susana Wald and her daughter, surrealist poet Beatriz Hausner.

Register for the event here.

From her earliest perception of automatism, through the assumption of surrealism as a way of life, in partnership with Ludwig Zeller, this session will feature Susana Wald. Her art, her writing, her curatorial and publishing work will come alive in a presentation that traces her trajectory within international surrealism. Starting in Chile, through the phenomenon that was Casa de la Luna, and activities such as the landmark exhibition Surrealismo en Chile, followed by her decades-long and vibrant participation in the Phases movement while living in Canada, Susana will draw us into her rich world as an artist devoted to surrealism and its environs.

Susana Wald (1937) was born in Budapest. Her family immigrated to Buenos Aires after WWII, where she went to art school, specializing in ceramics. Her first marriage took her to Chile, where she had her three children and, significantly, would go on to form a life-long collaboration and relationship with Ludwig Zeller. After immigrating to Toronto in the early 1970s, Wald became active in the Phases movement, participating in collective activities and exhibitions, as well as holding solo shows in Canada and internationally. With Zeller, she established Oasis Publications, which saw the publication of major Latin American and European surrealists, usually in bilingual editions. Wald, who speaks several languages, works mostly in English and Spanish, both as a translator and as an author of several books, including En busca de Laurette Sejourné (December 2023). Her work has been featured in major exhibitions, including the edition of the Venice Biennale dedicated to art and alchemy, curated by the late Arturo Schwarz.

Beatriz Hausner (1958) was born in Chile and immigrated to Canada with her family when she was a teenager. She has published several poetry books, including The Wardrobe Mistress (2004), Sew Him Up (2010), Enter the Raccoon (2012), Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart (2020) and She Who Lies Above (2023). Her work has been published internationally and translated into several languages, including her native Spanish, Dutch, and Greek. Hausner is an active participant in the international surrealist movement. She is a respected historian and translator of Latin American surrealism. Her translations of poets like César Moro, Enrique Gómez-Correa, Olga Orozco, Jorge Cáceres, and Rosamel del Valle have exerted an important influence on her own writing. She lives in Toronto where she publishes The Philosophical Egg.