The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum

Ortman invites participants to read, touch, and play her scores. Participants are welcome to borrow a Box to bring home or interact with it inside the Museum’s Studio.

Aldrich Box: Transonic Homes will be on view starting on Wednesday, September 20, 2023 and available for loan from the Museum’s Front Desk starting on Sunday, October 1, 2023.

In conjunction with the Aldrich Box: Transonic Homes, the Museum presented a live solo performance by Ortman at The Aldrich on Saturday, September 23, 2023 at 6:30 pm.

"Violin ‘Eugene’ contains “Because Once You Enter My House It Becomes Our House” - my first live performance after COVID-19 at Socrates Sculpture Park in New York City in 2020.

Violin ‘Lark’contains “TRANSONIC US <<-->> (SUBWAYS)” - a recording of me playing at Ende Tymes 13 Festival of Noise and Sonic Liberation in Brooklyn in 2022.

Violin ‘Karl’ contains “Someday We’ll Be Together” - from my second solo album of the same name about the eventual meeting of hearts.”

Laura Ortman creates across multiple platforms, including recorded albums, live performances, and filmic and artistic soundtracks. She has collaborated with artists such as Tony Conrad, Jock Soto, Raven Chacon, Nanobah Becker, Okkyung Lee, Martin Bisi, Jeffrey Gibson, Caroline Monnet, Tanya Lukin Linklater, Demian DinéYazhi, New Red Order, and In Defense of Memory. An inquisitive and exquisite violinist, Ortman is versed in Apache violin, piano, electric guitar, keyboards, and amplified violin, often sings through a megaphone, and is a producer of capacious field recordings. She has performed at The Whitney Museum of American Art, The Guggenheim, and The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Musée d’Art Contemporain de Montréal, Artists Space, Venice Biennale, The Stone residency, The New Museum, imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival, The Toronto Biennial, and the Centre Pompidou, Paris, among countless established and DIY venues in the US, Canada, and Europe.

In 2008 Ortman founded the Coast Orchestra, an all-Native American orchestral ensemble that performed a live soundtrack to Edward Curtis’s film In the Land of the Head Hunters (1914), the first silent feature film to star an all-Native American cast.

Ortman is the recipient of the 2023 Institute of American Indian Arts Artist-In-Residence, 2022 Forge Project Fellowship, 2022 United States Artists Fellowship, 2022 Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists, 2020 Jerome@Camargo Residency in Cassis, France, 2017 Jerome Foundation Composer and Sound Artist Fellowship, 2016 Art Matters Grant, 2016 Native Arts and Culture Foundation Fellowship, 2015 IAIA’s Museum of Contemporary Native Arts Social Engagement Residency, 2014-15 Rauschenberg Residency, and 2010 Artist-in-Residence at Issue Project Room. She was also a participating artist in the 2019 Whitney Biennial. Ortman lives in Brooklyn, New York.