Martha Wilson
1947–

Introduction

Martha Wilson (born 1947 in Newtown, Pennsylvania) is an American feminist performance artist and the founding director of Franklin Furnace Archive art organization. Over the past four decades she has developed and "created innovative photographic and video works that explore her female subjectivity through role-playing, costume transformation, and 'invasions' of other peoples personas". She is a recipient of two National Endowment for the Arts fellowships, a New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship, and an Obie Award and a Bessie Award for commitment to artists’ freedom of expression. She is represented by P.P.O.W. Gallery in New York City.

In the early 1970s while studying in Halifax in Nova Scotia, she began to make videos and photo/text-based performances. When she moved to New York City in 1974 she continued to develop and explore her photo/text and video performances. From this and other works during her career she gained attention within the US for her provocative characters, costumes, works and performances. In 1976 she founded and became director of the Franklin Furnace Archive, which is an artist-run space that focuses on the exploration and promotion of artists books, installation art, video and performance art.

Wikidata identifier

Q6774612

View the full Wikipedia entry

Information from Wikipedia, made available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Accessed October 24, 2024.

Country of birth

United States

Roles

Artist, director, performance artist, photographer, video artist

ULAN identifier

500350933

Names

Martha Wilson, Martha S. Wilson, Martha Wilson Storey, Martha Storey Wilson

View the full Getty record

Information from the Getty Research Institute's Union List of Artist Names ® (ULAN), made available under the ODC Attribution License. Accessed October 24, 2024.





On the Hour

A 30-second online art project:
Maya Man, A Realistic Day In My Life Living In New York City

Learn more about this project

Learn more at whitney.org/artport

On the Hour projects can contain motion and sound. To respect your accessibility settings autoplay is disabled.