Lynn Hershman Leeson
Lynn Hershman Leeson is an American artist and filmmaker. She has received wide recognition for a body of work combining art with social commentary, particularly regarding the relationship between humans and technology. In 2004 she was named the most influential woman working in New Media.
Leeson's work has as its themes: identity in a time of consumerism, privacy in an era of surveillance, interfacing of humans and machines, and the relationship between real and virtual worlds. Her work grew out of an installation art and performance tradition with an emphasis on interactivity. With a practice spanning more than forty years, Leeson has worked in performance, moving image, drawing, collage, text-based work, site-specific interventions, and later new media / digital technologies, and interactive net-based works, making her one of the first truly multi-disciplinary artists.
Work by Lynn Hershman Leeson is featured in the public collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the William Lehmbruck Museum, the ZKM Zentrum fur Kunst und Medientechnologie), the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Canada, the Walker Art Center and the University Art Museum, Berkeley, in addition to the private collections of Donald Hess and Arturo Schwarz, among many others. Commissions include projects for the Tate Modern, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, de Young Museum, Daniel Langlois Foundation, Stanford University and Charles Schwab.
Publications
- editor, Clicking In: Hot Links to a Digital Culture, Seattle: Bay Press, 1996, x+371 pp.
Literature
- The Art and Films of Lynn Hershman Leeson: Secret Agents, Private I, ed. Meredith Tromble, forew. Robin Held, University of California Press, and Seattle: Henry Art Gallery, 2005, 229 pp.
