Lynn Hershman Leeson

Goings On About Town: Lynn Hershman Leeson
Category
Exhibition Review
Date
Feb 1, 2017
Source
The New Yorker
Author
Excerpt

This selection of absorbing interactive and video works spans four decades in the career of the American artist, a feminist trailblazer who exploits new technologies in provocative ways. The interactive videodisk “Lorna,” from 1979-1982, displayed in a living-room-like set with leopard-print armchairs and teal walls, invites you to snoop through the apartment of an agoraphobe. The navigation is clunky by today’s standards, but the work endures as a seductive, discomfiting exploration of voyeuristic complicity. In “Venus of the Anthropocene,” completed this year, a white-wigged cyborg-mannequin with gold organs sits at a vanity, in a familiar scene of feminine self-inspection. Stand behind her, though, and you’ll find your own face frozen in the mirror, as stats display your gender, age, and mood, as determined by facial-analysis software.

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