Lynn Hershman Leeson: A Profile

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Lynn Hershman Leeson: A Profile
Macey Hand
Brenau University
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Lynn Hershman Leeson: A Profile
Technology define much of current world’s culture and mental habits. For decades, as far back as mid-20th century, artists, particularly new media creators, have been grappling with, often manipulating, uses and purposes of technology in everyday life. Lynn Hershman Leeson, often dubbed a “second-wave” feminist and artist (Archery, 2015), was one such pioneering figure in art world. Putting into question, as early as 1960s, Leeson continues to offer, now under more limelight compared to earlier phases, more nuanced representations of femininity, identity and self. Tapping into a long repertoire – and, indeed, lore – of cyborgs and human-machine interactions, Leeson engages viewers – in museums, art galleries and, more recently, via longer feature films – in a journey about constant self-invention. To do so, Leeson adopts several innovative approaches using a myriad of new media, particularly video installations, in order to develop subtler concepts of identity and self. If anything, one such approach is by using extended representations of real life character including, most notably, Roberta Bretimore (Schama, 2019). In more recent work, moreover, Leeson appears to combine different story lines she has created and/or experienced over a lifetime in order to provide yet subtler understandings of self, identity and, of course, femininity in a much more AI-defined and screen-immersed world (Turner,
2018). To put matters into perspective, a closer examination is required of Leeson’s animated artwork. For current purposes, a wide-angle review, so to speak, of Leeson’s artwork is performed in order to understand artist’s overall bearing and, more importantly, artistic decisions informed by a multiplicity of influences and experiences. This brief artist profile aims, accordingly, to examine major challenges and solutions Lynn Hershman Leeson encounters in
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visual expressions and representations to arrive at artistic decisions as experienced (or not) by past, current and future viewers.
The debut of Leeson into inner circle art scene in New York goes back to as early as 1960s. Establishing a living in Brooklyn, NY, away from a largely conservative Jewish origins (Turner), Leeson made an avant-garde splash by Breathing Machine II. Considered an early example of work employing sensor technology, Breathing Machine II subverts a more established representation of female’s identity and body as submissive and seductive (Archery). By combining joviality and morbidity, in one interpretation, Breathing Machine II is a clear departure from earlier feminine representations and, perhaps more importantly, an early prediction of a more sophisticated, if not confusing, conception of feminine self, identity and body. This early cyborg-ba...