Lynn Hershman Leeson

"Over the last four decades, artist and filmmaker Lynn Hershman Leeson has been internationally acclaimed for her art and films. Hershman Leeson presents her feature film Teknolust (2002, 85 min.) and a short film VertiGhost (2017, 13 min.). Following the screenings, will be a conversation with the artist and David Levine, Professor of the Practice in the Theatre, Dance, Media Department. 

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 forty years she has made pioneering contributions to the fields of photography, video, film, performance, installation and interactive as well as net-based media art.  In 2014m  ZKM \ Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, Germany, mounted the first comprehensive retrospective of her work titled Civic Radar curated by Peter Weibel and Andreas Beitin. A substantial publication, which Holland Cotter listed as one of the “10 indispensible art books of 2016”.

Lynn 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 receieve the College Art Association’s Lifetime Achievement Award.

Her five feature films- Strange Culture, Teknolust, Conceiving Ada!Women Art Revolution: A Secret History, and Tania Libre 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 Festival of Films on Art.

Art work by Lynn Hershman Leeson is featured in the public collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Zentrum fur Kunst und Medientechnologie, The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The SF MOMA,  The Tate Modern, The National Gallery of Canada, and the Walker Art Center in addition to many celebrated private collections. 

She is represented by Bridget Donahue New York and Anglim Gilbert Gallery San Francisco.

This program is in collaboration with the ICA\/Boston exhibition Art in the Age of the Internet, 1989 to Today and the Theatre, Dance, Media Department.