{"data":{"id":"11861","type":"artist","attributes":{"id":11861,"topgoose_id":2797,"tms_id":11861,"display_name":"Sadie Benning","sort_name":"Benning Sadie","display_date":"1973–","begin_date":"1973","end_date":"0","biography":"\u003cp\u003eSadie Benning has produced experimental videos since the late 1980s, beginning with those she shot in her childhood bedroom with a Fisher-Price Pixelvision camera (a gift from her father, the filmmaker \u003ca href=\"/artists/14934\"\u003eJames Benning\u003c/a\u003e) that illuminate her coming of age and coming out in the Midwest. Benning was still a teenager when her work was first exhibited, and in 1993 she became the youngest artist to be included in a \u003ca href=\"/exhibitions/the-biennial\"\u003eWhitney Biennial\u003c/a\u003e. From 1998 to 2000 she was a member of the electronic music group Le Tigre, which projected her drawings as slides during their performances. Since 2006 her work has been focused primarily on painting.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"/collection/works/35385\"\u003e\u003cem\u003ePlay Pause\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e, a two-channel video that Benning produced in collaboration with Solveig Nelson, displays hundreds of the artist’s gouache drawings, scanned and sequenced, accompanied by electronic beats and ambient sound recordings she made in Chicago and Milwaukee. The title refers to Benning’s self-taught analogue method of sound editing using the “play” and “pause” functions of her cassette recorder— an anachronistic approach that engenders the sense of loss that permeates \u003cem\u003ePlay Pause.\u003c/em\u003e The drawings combine the aesthetics of the Pixelvision camera with Benning’s interest in the works of outsider artists like \u003ca href=\"/artists/11701\"\u003eHenry Darger\u003c/a\u003e. Unlike most of her earlier videos, however, here there are no recurring characters and no directed storyline. Benning described the open-endedness of this approach as “a suspended narrative— an intensified narrative—a lack of narrative, to space out, to day dream, a musical feeling, ambience, an open room, jazz we like to listen to, a closed door, a revolving door, people looking, thinking about more than one thing at a time, being together, being alone.”\u003c/p\u003e","on_view":false,"artport":false,"biennial":true,"collection":true,"ulan_id":"500114576","wikidata_id":"Q448193","created_at":"2017-08-30T17:36:18.000-04:00","updated_at":"2026-03-31T07:00:37.827-04:00","links":{"artworks":"/api/artists/11861/artworks","exhibitions":"/api/artists/11861/exhibitions"}}}}