Lynn Hershman Leeson

Since 1954, artist and filmmaker Lynn Hershman Leeson has been creating ground-breaking works investigating technology, identity, surveillance, and the use of media as a tool of empowerment against censorship and political repression.

Radical Software: Women, Art & Computing 1960–1991

Radical Software: Women, Art & Computing 1960–1991

“A dialogue emerges between the human and the technological, evoking the hybrid figure of the cyborg. This connection is explored in the exhibition through works that present a new relationship between the body and technology. X-Ray Woman FIG.8 and Self-Portrait as Another Person FIG.9 by Lynn Hershman Leeson (b.1941) probe the fluidity of identity, blurring the lines between who we are and who we might become. In Self-Portrait as Another Person, a wax cast of the artist’s face, disguised with a wig and lipstick, becomes a medium for reflecting on the ambiguity of selfhood and the illusion of control. The sound of her breath, recorded during a stay in hospital, along with a sensor that triggers personal questions, prompts the viewer to reconsider identity as something suspended between the real and the artificial. Hershman Leeson’s work questions the notion of a stable subject, positioning technology as an extension of both body and psyche – a vehicle for mining the complexity of being. Anticipating post-human thought, her practice prefigures Donna J. Haraway’s cyborg theory, which holds that the body is not confined to its biological essence but shaped by technology. This also resonates with Legacy Russell’s ‘glitch feminism’, which sees the glitch as an interruption of conventions that opens pathway to non-binary and non-normative identities.”

read more
Vital Signs: Artists and the Body at MoMA

Vital Signs: Artists and the Body at MoMA

“Behind this mask, another mask; I will never be done with removing all these faces,” wrote artist and poet Claude Cahun in 1930. Throughout the 20th century, artists have imagined the body and ideas of the self as fluid and open to ongoing transformations. Vital...

read more
Wallpaper from The Infinity Engine - 2014

Book: Civic Radar

“[An] indispensable book.” -Holland Cotter

Civic Radar presents the first comprehensive overview of Lynn Hershman Leeson’s work. Edited by Peter Weibel, with contributions from thirteen renowned authors including Andreas Beitin, Pamela Lee, Laura Poitras, Ruby Rich, Jeffrey Schnapp, Kyle Stephan, Kristine Stiles, Ingeborg Reichle, and Tilda Swinton.

View in store ↗    Buy from publisher    Buy from Amazon

Or check out Anti-Bodies, listed as a “Best Art Book of 2019” in the New York Times.