The Exhibition runs from November 4, 2005 to Janurary 29, 2006

Expressed in drawings, paintings, photographs, performances, robotic works, digital art, videos, films, interactive multimedia installations, and artificial intelligence works, Hershman Leeson's oeuvre creates fictional characters through her artwork to reveal the complicated issues of identity. Long before the era of identity theft, her work highlights the fragility of our own self in our own context. The aesthetic arc of her work provides a fun house like mirror of issues related to the fragmentation of human frailty in our time. Image to the right Teknolust 2001, Still from Feature film 35 mm, Courtesy of the artist

Hershmanlandia is an exhibition set in a context both real and virtual. It is inhabited by the multiple female personas and agents that have embodied her iconic conceptual territory and interests: the construction of identity in relation to vision, spectacle and spectatorship; interactivity; the relationship between bodies and machines; and shifting ideas of the real and the virtual. In the past, exhibitions have often focused on the artist's technological innovations, Hershmanlandia gives us a survey of those themes which have stayed with the artist throughout her career in all media. Image to the leftt Seduction., 1988, Gelatin silver print , Courtesy of the artist

For most of her career, Lynn Hershman Leeson has maintained separate practices in visual arts and film. Recently, she has brought these two interests together by using the character Ruby from Teknolust, her recent feature film, with Agent Ruby, an artificially intelligent [AIML] Web agent that has the ability to learn through interaction with the viewer. Hershmanlandia provides a fresh reassessment of: contemporary art, feminist theory, emerging technologies, and the full range of contemporary creative endeavor. Image to the right Agent Ruby 2., 2002-present, Artificially intelligent agent, Commissioned by The Daniel Langlois Foundation and The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Courtesy the artist

Accompanying the exhibition is The Art and Films of Lynn Hershman Leeson: Secret Agents, Private I, a major co-publication of the University of California Press and the Henry Art Gallery, distributed by University of California Press, and which is available now. This catalogue is the first critical monograph on the artist, and features a foreword by Hershmanlandia curator Robin Held, an introduction by Howard Fox, a detailed timeline by Lynn Hershman Leeson, and critical essays on Hershman Leeson's visual art, new media, and film by art historians/curators Amelia Jones, Abigail Solomon-Godeau, Jean Gagnon, Steve Dietz, and Meredith Tromble, and by film theorists David James and B. Ruby Rich. Image to the left Room of One’s Own., 1990-1993, Interactive videodisk transferred to DVD, Courtesy of the artist

The exhibition was curated for the Henry Art Gallery by Robin Held. Curator of Exhibitions at the Frye Art Museum. Major support for this exhibition has been provided by: the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the City of Seattle Office of Arts and Cultural Affairs, the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation; and donors to the Henry Art Gallery Contemporary Art Fund. In-kind support provided by Grand Hyatt Seattle, and The Stranger. Image to the right The Dollie Clones., 1995-1998, Telerobotic humanoids, Courtesy the artist

Visit the exhibition on the web by clicking here.

Visit the artist on the web by clicking here