Introduction

American artist Lynn Hershman Leeson's (b.1941) artistic practice spans more than five decades and is internationally acclaimed for her art and films. As one of the earliest new media vanguard artists, Hershman Leeson is widely known 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 decades, she has made pioneering contributions to the fields of photography, video, film, performance, installation and interactive as well as net-based media art.

Her first solo museum exhibition in New York, Twisted, was presented at the New Museum in 2021. Other recent solo exhibitions include: Staged Intimacy 1974-2019, Rozenstraat, Amsterdam, The Netherlands (2021); First Person Plural, Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo, Madrid, Spain (2019) and KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin, Germany (2018); Lynn Hershman Leeson: Anti-Bodies, House of Electronic Arts Basel (HeK Basel), Basel, Switzerland (2018); Civic Radar, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, U.S.A. (2017) and ZKM | Museum of Contemporary Art, Karlsruhe, Germany (2014); The Complete Roberta Breitmore, Whitworth Art Gallery, University of Manchester, U.K. (2009). She also participated in various international group exhibitions and biennales, including the 59th International Art Exhibition, Venice Biennale: The Milk of Dreams, Venice, Italy (2022); 13th Gwangju Biennale, Gwangju, South Korea (2021); Art in the Age of Anxiety, Sharjah Art Foundation, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates (2020); Uncanny Valley: Being Human in the Age of AI, de Young Museum, San Francisco, U.S.A. (2020); Manual Override, The Shed, New York, U.S.A. (2019); The 6th Guangzhou Triennial: As We May Think, Feedforward, Guangdong Museum of Art, Guangzhou (2018).

She was award a Special Mention from the jury for her presentation at the 59th Venice Biennale (2022), and was also a recipient of the Siggraph Lifetime Achievement Award (2009), Prix Ars Electronica Award of Distinction (2020) and Golden Nica (1999), and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship (2009). In 2017 she received a USA Artist Fellowship, the San Francisco Film Society’s “Persistence of Vision” Award, and 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.

Her work has been shown in over 200 large-scale exhibitions throughout the world and is featured in the public collections of the Museum of Modern Art New York, Tate Modern London, Lehmbruck Museum Duisburg, Los Angeles County Museum of Contemporary Art, National Gallery of Canada Ottawa, Walker Art Centre Minneapolis, Whitworth Art Gallery Manchester, ZKM|Centre for Art and Media Karlsruhe, Berkeley Art Museum, etc.