Gender as image and media field

In her lecture Anja Zimmermann discusses selected works by Lynn Hershman Leeson in the light of contemporary debates on gender in art, politics and the social sciences so as to facilitate a new perspective on the exhibited works.

Lynn Hershman Leeson’s oeuvre has, from the outset, given rise to numerous works the focus of which turns on the role of women in society and in the art business. Hence, as early as the 1970s, she began to rebel against male domination in art institutes by organizing exhibitions featuring the work of exclusively female artists, and by founding the exhibitions Floating Museum (1974–1978), an organization for the implementation of extraordinary art projects with artists. Her award-winning documentary film »!W.A.R. Women Art Revolution« (2010) features interviews with numerous artists, curators and art critics, and presents the art history of the second half of the twentieth century from a female perspective. In her performances, films, photographs, objects and installations, Hershman Leeson not only thematizes the instrumentalization of women as sexual objects, but also points to the discrimination of other population groups – such as blacks and homosexuals.
 

PD Dr. Anja Zimmermann

is lecturer at the University of Oldenburg. She studied art history, empirical cultural science and education in Würzburg and Tübingen, and gained her PhD in art history. Following her habilitation, she held various lectureships and deputy professorships, among others in Hamburg, Bern, Vienna and Klagenfurt. In addition to her main areas of research on gender research, controversies in contemporary art, and the relationship between art and science, she has contributed numerous publications (among other things, »Kunstgeschichte und Gender« (ed.), Berlin 2006; »Biologische Metaphern zwischen Kunst, Kunstgeschichte und Wissenschaft in Neuzeit und Moderne«, Berlin 2014).