Michelle Handelman
Michelle Handelman uses video, live performance, and photography to make confrontational works that explore the sublime in its various forms of excess and nothingness. Her background is a study in opposites–raised during the late 60s/early 70s, Handelman split her time between Chicago, where her mother was a fixture in the art world, and Los Angeles, where her father was a player in the counterculture sex industry. Over the years Handelman has voraciously traversed both these worlds, developing a body of work that investigates ways of looking at the forbidden and revealing dark, subconscious layers of outsider agency. “My work can be best described by theorist Helene Cixous’ ideas of Visceral Feminism: aggressively traversing the corporeal landscape in its various forms of excess and undress, while simultaneously giving it up for the viewer in an overflow of visual and psychological sensations,” explains the artist.
In the mid 90s Handelman directed and produced the feature documentary BloodSisters, an in-depth look at the San Francisco Leatherdyke scene that has just been re-released by the Tribeca Film Institute’s Reframe Collection. Her videos have screened internationally including Georges Pompidou Centre in Paris, ICA in London, MIT List Visual Arts Center in Cambridge, American Film …
Michelle Handelman uses video, live performance, and photography to make confrontational works that explore the sublime in its various forms of excess and nothingness. Her background is a study in opposites–raised during the late 60s/early 70s, Handelman split her time between Chicago, where her mother was a fixture in the art world, and Los Angeles, where her father was a player in the counterculture sex industry. Over the years Handelman has voraciously traversed both these worlds, developing a body of work that investigates ways of looking at the forbidden and revealing dark, subconscious layers of outsider agency. “My work can be best described by theorist Helene Cixous’ ideas of Visceral Feminism: aggressively traversing the corporeal landscape in its various forms of excess and undress, while simultaneously giving it up for the viewer in an overflow of visual and psychological sensations,” explains the artist.
In the mid 90s Handelman directed and produced the feature documentary BloodSisters, an in-depth look at the San Francisco Leatherdyke scene that has just been re-released by the Tribeca Film Institute’s Reframe Collection. Her videos have screened internationally including Georges Pompidou Centre in Paris, ICA in London, MIT List Visual Arts Center in Cambridge, American Film Institute, and 3LD Art & Technology Center in New York. Her performances have been featured at Participant Inc in New York, Exit Art in New York, Performa 05, 3LD Art & Technology Center in New York, Jack the Pelican in Brooklyn, and The Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art in Ridgefield.
Courtesy of the artist
Moscow Museum of Contemporary Art, Russia
Kadist Art Foundation, San Francisco, CA and Paris, France
di Rosa Foundation and Preserve, CA
The Zabludowicz Collection, London, UK
The Jean Pigozzi Collection, Geneva, Switzerland
The Film Arts Foundation Collection of the University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley, CA
Leather Archives and Museum, Chicago, IL
