Andrea Fraser

Born	April 3, 1965(1965-04-03) Billings, Montana, United States
Web	UbuWeb Film, Aaaaarg, Wikipedia
Collections	MoMA, Tate, Artic, MOCA, Harvard, Pompidou, Ludwig

Andrea Fraser (1965, Billings, Montana) is an artist and Professor in the Department of Art at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her work has been identified with performance, video, project-based art, context art, and institutional critique.

She studied at the School of Visual Arts, New York (1982–84), Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program, New York (1984–85), and New York University, New York (1985–86).

Fraser was a founding member of the feminist performance group, The V-Girls (1986–96); the project-based artist initiative Parasite (1997–98); and the cooperative art gallery Orchard (2005–present).

Surveys of her work have been presented by the Belkin Art Gallery, University of British Columbia; the Kunstverein Hamburg; the Kemper Art Museum, Washington University; the Franz Hals Museum in Haarlem; and the Carpenter Center, Harvard University. Major retrospectives of her work have been organized by the Museum Ludwig Cologne (2013); the Museum der Moderne Kunst Salzburg (2015); the Museum of Contemporary Art Barcelona and the MUAC UNAM Mexico City (both 2016).

She lives in Los Angeles.

Films, videos

• Kunst muss hängen (Art Must Hang) (Galerie Christian Nagel / Cologne), 2001. Featured in Make Your Own Life: Artists In & Out of Cologne. Fraser reenacted an impromptu 1995 speech by a drunk Martin Kippenberger, word-by-word, gesture-for-gesture.

• Little Frank and His Carp, 2001. Videotape performance. Fraser targets architectural dominance of modern gallery spaces. Using the original soundtrack of an acoustic guide at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, she "... writhes with pleasure as the recorded voice draws attention to the undulating curves and textured surfaces of the surrounding space" which she takes literally in an "erotic encounter".

• Official Welcome (Hamburger Kunstverein), 2003. Commissioned by the MICA Foundation for a private reception. Fraser mimicks "the banal comments and effusive words of praise uttered by presenters and recipients during art-awards ceremonies. Midstream, assuming the persona of a troubled, postfeminist art star, Fraser strips down, [...] to a Gucci thong, bra and high-heel shoes, and says, I'm not a person today. I'm an object in an art work."

• Untitled, 2003. Videotape performance. Fraser recorded a hotel-room sexual encounter with a private collector, who had paid close to $20,000 to participate, "not for sex, according to the artist, but to make an artwork." According to Fraser, the amount that the collector had paid her has not been disclosed, and the "$20,000" figure is way off the mark. Only 5 copies of the 60-minute DVD were produced, 3 of which are in private collections, 1 being that of the collector with whom she had had the sexual encounter; he had pre-purchased the performance piece in which he was a vital participant.

Writings, Catalogues

Catalogues, monographs

• Andrea Fraser: Works 1984-2003, Dumont, 2003.

• Andrea Fraser: eine Gesellschaft des Geschmacks, Munich: Kunstverein, 1993, 124 pp. Exh. held at Kunstverein München, Munich, 20 Jan-7 Mar 1993. (German)/(English)

• Andrea Fraser: Works: 1984 to 2003, ed. Yilmaz Dziewior, Cologne: DuMont Literatur und Kunst Verlag, 2003, 288 pp. Exh. held at Kunstverein Hamburg, 13 Sep-9 Nov 2003. (German)/(English)

• Museum Highlights: The Writings of Andrea Fraser, ed. Alexander Alberro, MIT Press, 2005, xxxvii+291 pp.

• What Do I as an Artist, Provide?, Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, 2007, 23 pp.

• Andrea Fraser: Texts, Scripts, Transcripts / Texte, Skripte, Transkripte, ed. Barbara Engelbach, Cologne: Museum Ludwig, and Walther König, 2013, 319 pp. Exh. held at Museum Ludwig, Cologne, 21 Apr-21 Jul 2013. (English)/(German)

• Andrea Fraser, ed. Sabine Breitweiser, Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz, 2015, 319 pp. Exh. held at Museum der Moderne Salzburg, 21 Mar-5 Jul 2015.

• Andrea Fraser. L’1%, c’est moi, ed. Ekaterina Álvarez Romero, Ciudad de México: Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo (MUAC), and Barcelona: Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA), 2016, 119 pp, ARG. (Spanish)/(English)

Essays

• "Museum Highlights: A Gallery Talk", October 57, Summer 1991, pp 104-122.

• "How to Provide an Artistic Service: An Introduction", 1994. Presented at The Depot, Vienna, Oct 1994.

• "What's Intangible, Transitory, Mediating, Participatory, and Rendered in the Public Sphere?", October 80, Spring 1997, pp 111-116.

• "Why Does Fred Sandback’s Work Make Me Cry?", Grey Room 22, Winter 2005, pp 30-47.

• "From the Critique of Institutions to an Institution of Critique", Artforum 44:1, New York, Sep 2005, pp 278-283, n332.

• "‘A Museum is Not a Business. It is Run in a Businesslike Fashion’", in Art and Institutions: Current Conflicts, Critique and Collaborations, ed. Nina Möntmann, London: Black Dog Publishing, 2006, pp 86-98.

• "Speaking of the Social World...", Texte zur Kunst 81, Berlin, Mar 2011, pp 153-158.

• "‘I am going to tell you what I am not; pay attention, this is exactly what I am,’", in Museum 21: Institution, Idea, Practice, ed. Sophie Byrne, Dublin: Irish Museum of Modern Art, 2011, pp 82-103.

• "L’1% C’est Moi", Texte zur Kunst 83, Berlin, Sep 2011, pp 114-127.
  • "L’1% C’est Moi", c2016. (Spanish)

• "There's No Place Like Home", Whitney Museum of American Art: Whitney Biennial, pp 28-33, 2012, ARG.
  • "Como en casa en ninguna parte", 2016. (Spanish)

Interviews

• Andrea Fraser answers questions about Orchard for Neue Review, n.d.
• "Andrea Fraser in Conversation with Sabine Breitwieser", 2015.
• Artforum interview, video, 2016.
• "Son(i)a 299: Andrea Fraser", audio, Barcelona: Ràdio Web MACBA, Sep 2016, 32 min.

Literature

• Sven Lütticken, "Andrea Fraser: Institutional Analysis", 2015.

Links

• Profile on UCLA