Ryan Semegran
Left Out to Dry, 2024Live Performance + Installation Dirty Water, Found ClothesArtist Bio
Ryan Semegran (b. 2000, Austin, TX) is a Dallas based interdisciplinary artist and curator. Semegran’s artistic practice focuses on the relationship between the body, identity, and the spiritual through immersive live performances, photography, found object sculpture, and video installations. Pulling from their ancestral folklore, Semegran intends to explore the idea of the ritual and how it transforms the way people commune, from person to person and through another plane.
Their work has been featured in institutions and galleries such as Satellite Gallery NYC, Dallas Contemporary, Arts Fort Worth, and the Oak Cliff Cultural Center. Semegran is a 2025 recipient of the Arch and Anne Giles Kimbrough Fund through the Dallas Museum of Art. Semegran has used these funds to start a project space, 2 BED 1 BATH, inside their apartment in Oak Cliff.
Artist Statement
Since childhood, I have been exposed to the intimate practices of local brujas and witchdoctors, practitioners that my mother and grandmother sought counsel with. They were invited into our homes to cleanse whatever leftover spirits lingered in the space, they protected my sister and I from bad actors and gave my mom a sense of security through very difficult times in our lives. These witches are maintaining a practice that is precolonial, morphed into something that is tangible for the everyday person.
My current body of work views the act of performance as a ritual; conceptual alters to protect me and provide me with support. My upbringing in an interfaith household inspires my work heavily, pulling aspects that are recognizable to the senses. Incense, plant matter, salt, and other materials that carry spiritual weight. I am interested in triggering these senses; smells, sound, touch, and I am interested in how experiencing a specific sense can transport you somewhere. Taking these materials and practices, the visual language I am trying to create is one where I can dissect personal experiences and understand them in their totality. Whether it is my relationship with myself or others, these rituals are acts of clarity and understanding shared with the viewer.