Lynn Leeson

For over 50 years, Lynn Hershman Leeson (born 1941) has created an innovative and prescient body of work that mines intersections between technology and the self. Known for her pioneering contributions to media art, Hershman Leeson has consistently worked in tandem with the latest technological developments from Artificial Intelligence to DNA programming, often anticipating many of the issues affecting society today.
Twisted brings together a selection of the artist’s work in drawing, sculpture, video, photography, and interactive and net-based art, focusing on themes of transmutation, identity construction and the evolution of the cyborg. It includes some of Hershman Leeson’s most important projects, including the Breathing Machine sculptures; early drawings from the 1960s, many of which have never been shown; works from the Roberta Breitmore series (1970–79), perhaps her best-known project, in which she transformed her own identity into a fictional persona; selections from her Water Women series (1976–2010); and many more.

At the center of this publication is artist and filmmaker Lynn Hershman Leeson‘s (born 1941) installation The Infinity Engine, modeled after a genetics laboratory. Hershman Leeson, who divides her time between New York and San Francisco, has been examining the interplay of technology, media and identity since the 1960s, through the mediums of photography, film, video, objects and installations, computer-based art, software and performance.

Here, she shows how the boundaries between natural and artificial life are dissolving at an increasingly rapid pace in the age of synthetic biology, and explores how life itself can now be artificially shaped—from DNA manipulation, artificial human organs manufactured via 3D-bioprinting and antibody research to the use of DNA as a biological storage medium. Documenting these works through installation photographs of the artist’s exhibition at the HeK Basel, this volume also contains essays that offer both scientific context and insight into this trailblazing artist’s oeuvre and her current focus on biotechnology.