BIOGRAPHY

I am a research-based artist working predominantly with anthropologists and choreographers. My interests focus on the role of ordinary affects in everyday life, movement and sonic thinking as well as corporeal and generative intelligence. I have a PhD in Social Sculpture and have devised cross cultural art projects that were presented at the EXPO Shanghai 2010, Art Berlin, the Shanghai Biennial 2012 as well as local neighbourhood venues. Between 2018 and 2020, I directed the curatorial program for Lijiang Studio in Jixiang Village, Yulong Naxi Autonomous Region, China. Since 2021 I have run annual workshops at China Academy of Art.Contributor to LANGUAGE BASED ARTISTIC RESEARCH SIG https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/835089/1019931/7835Fellow of the international program AI2Amplify (2022) by invitation of the Goethe Institute. Currently I am working with researchers at The Ecology and Cultures Innovation Lab at Tongji University, Shanghai and since 2022 with researchers at the Centre for Dance Research at Coventry University https://www.coventry.ac.uk/research/about-us/research-events/2021/the-shape-of-sound/ 

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My most recent publications are 

January 2024 Journal article published by the Sonic Art Research Unit at Oxford Brookes University
‘a row of trees’  Petra Johnson – Shimmering Lenses
Volume 3, Issue 1


June 2024 Video Essay published by the Journal for Embodied Research
‘the matter ecologic’ is available on https://jer.openlibhums.org/article/id/10282/.
Volume 7 Issue 1 DOI:  https://doi.org/10.16995/jer.issue.1283


September 2025, Book published by Bloomsbury Press
In a forthcoming publication, Dance and Silence, researcher Vipavinee Artpradid and artist Petra Johnson explore silence in seemingly separate and unrelated physical, conceptual and philosophical spaces. 

See https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/dance-and-silence-9781350472105/