Lynn Hershman Leeson
Over the last five decades, artist and filmmaker Lynn Hershman Leeson has been internationally acclaimed for her art and films. Cited as one of the most influential media artists, Hershman Leeson is widely recognized for her innovative work investigating issues that are now recognized as key to the workings of society: the relationship between humans and technology, identity, surveillance, and the use of media as a tool of empowerment against censorship and political repression. Over the last fifty years she has made pioneering contributions to the fields of photography, video, film, performance, artificial intelligence, bio art, installation and interactive as well as net-based media art. ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, Germany, mounted the first comprehensive retrospective of her work titled Civic Radar. A substantial publication, which Holland Cotter named in The New York Times “one of the indispensable art books of 2016.”
Hershman Leeson is a recipient of a Siggraph Lifetime Achievement Award, Prix Ars Electronica Golden Nica, and a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship. In 2017 she received a USA Artist Fellowship, the San Francisco Film Society’s “Persistence of Vision” Award and will receive the College Art Association’s Lifetime Achievement Award.
Her six feature films ⏤ Strange Culture, Teknolust, Conceiving Ada, !Women Art Revolution: A Secret History, Tania Libre, and The Electronic Diaries are all in worldwide distribution and have screened at the Sundance Film Festival, Toronto Film Festival, and the Berlin International Film Festival, among others. She was awarded the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Prize for writing and directing Teknolust.!Women Art Revolution received the Grand Prize at the International Festival of Films on Art.
Artwork by Hershman Leeson is featured in the public collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; ZKM Center for Art and Media; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; The Tate Modern, London; The National Gallery of Canada; and the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, in addition to many celebrated private collections.
A retrospective of Hershman Leeson’s work, Lynn Hershman Leeson: Twisted will open at the New Museum, New York, in July, 2021.She is represented by Bridget Donahue, New York; Altman Siegel, San Francisco; and Waldburger Wouters, Brussels.
Featured Work
All images courtesy of the artist and Altman Siegel Gallery, Bridget Donohue and Galerie Waldburg Wouters.