Dreamlands: Immersive Cinema and Art, 1905–2016
Oct 28, 2016–Feb 5, 2017
Lynn Hershman Leeson
40
Since the mid-1960s, Lynn Hershman Leeson has been exploring the relationship between identity, gender, and technology in her work, adopting the female cyborg as a figure of transformative power.
Lynn Hershman Leeson (b. 1941), Room of One’s Own, 1990–93
Lynn Hershman Leeson (b. 1941), Room of One’s Own, 1990–93. Steel and acrylic, with closed-circuit camera; video, color, sound; LEDs; and miniature furniture, 15 × 16 × 35 in (38.1 × 40.6 × 88.9 cm). Collection of the artist; courtesy Bridget Donahue Gallery, New York © Lynn Hershman Leeson; image courtesy Bridget Donahue Gallery, New York
This interactive work is based on Thomas Edison’s Kinetograph, a viewing device that displayed film loops through a peephole. Here, a moving periscope tracks our eye movements, as we peer into a miniature bedroom, triggering a video of the room’s female occupant to be projected on one of its walls. The viewer’s eye also appears on a small TV monitor inside the room while a disembodied female voice challenges our voyeuristic gaze.