Lynn Hershman Leeson

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The following is an archive of written works related to Lynn Hershman Leeson’s career, important exhibitions, and Civic Radar, the most comprehensive exhibition and catalogue of her work to date. It also includes a selection of essays that expose the philosophical underpinnings of Hershman Leeson’s work, written by the artist herself. Text from earlier in the artist’s career is being added over time.

By Hans den Hartog Jager in NRC

"Lynn Hershman Leeson is a contemporary classic but no one knows she is a classic. Leeson is 80 and has been recognized for several years as an artist who is always one of the first to connect art and identity with new ...

Untamed in Search of the New

By Samantha Ozer in ArtForum

"If you think of artists as antibodies, going into a toxic space of culture and trying to identify the diseased parts and heal it, that’s a life project. I’ve been fortunate that I’ve lived long enough to be able to use DNA to make ...

The Artist Discusses Her Work With Antibodies and DNA

By Lynn Hershman Leeson in ArtNews

"Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s Running Fence (1972–76) was a temporary environmental artwork that was situated in Northern California and designed in the shape of a fence that extended 24 miles through the undulating landscape of ...

Sculptor Christo Remembered by Artist Lynn Hershman Leeson: ‘Spirited, Political, and Profoundly Kind’

By Pamela C. Scorzin in Kunstforum

"Dear Lynn Hershman Leeson, as a research artist you have been working for years with scientists, geneticists, programmers, developers and engineers, among others, to explore the effects of technological progress and change on ...

Ich Denke, Dass Algorithmen Das Titanweiss Der Malerei Dieser Ära Sind

By Joanne McNeil in Filmmaker Magazine

"There’s no question that Lynn Hershman Leeson is a prescient artist and filmmaker. Prescience is even a theme in her work, one she grapples with as a double-edged sword. Impossible to measure except in retrospect, it is a ...

Conceiving the Future: The Prescient Lynn Hershman Leeson

By Sarah Hotchkiss in KQED

"The appearance of one’s doppelgänger usually presages disaster. Today, a shadow version of oneself exists constantly alongside our flesh-and-bone selves, for the most part concealed under the surface of our smartphones, in the ebb and ...

Artists Mine Data and the Mostly Chilling Implications of AI in Uncanny Valley

By Brian Hester in the Times Square Chronicles

"Yesterday I had the opportunity to preview an exhibit, Manual Override, which opens today and runs through January 12, 2020 at The Shed. The experience was well worth the visit as it proved thought provoking and ...

Manual Override – Can It Be Stopped?

By Chloe Schama in Vogue

"But there’s another simpler but no less powerful way to engage with this complicated exhibition. See it for the installations dedicated to pioneering artist Lynn Hershman Leeson, who, after decades of relative anonymity, is finally ...

Pioneering Feminist Artist Lynn Hershman Leeson Gets Timely and Overdue Attention in a New Show

By Tess Thackara The New York Times

"She pioneered interactive video and artificial intelligence in art. Now this new-media path-breaker scrutinizes technology’s abuses at the Shed."

With ‘Shadow Stalker,’ Lynn Hershman Leeson Tackles Internet Surveillance

By Ksenia M. Soboleva in Hyperallergic

"Lynn Hershman Leeson’s documentation of the five-year-long performance (1973-1978) she did as a fictional persona named Roberta Breitner demonstrates that as early as 1973, she was exploring the false notion of an authentic ...

Tilda Swinton Curates Photography Inspired by Virginia Woolf’s Orlando

By Stefanie Hessler in E-Flux

"As Hershman Leeson disappears and Breitmore emerges, it becomes clear how much her work has directly and indirectly influenced younger generations of artists concerned with technology and artifice, like Amalia Ulman or Lizzie Fitch ...

Lynn Hershman Leeson’s First Person Plural

By Jori Finkel in The New York Times

"And Lynn Hershman Leeson made postage stamps in 1972 with images of her face partly obscured, challenging the United States government to stamp them and further obliterate her identity."

Tracing the Roots of Photo Sharing, From Mail Art to Instagram