Martha Rosler, M.F.A., is an influential video, installation and performance artist. She was born on July 29, 1943 in Brooklyn, New York. Martha Rosler did her BA at Brooklyn College, graduating in 1965. She then obtained her MFA in 1974 from the University of California at San Diego. She has taught at the Städelschule, a contemporary fine arts academy in Frankfurt, and at Rutgers University in New Brunswick in New Jersey at Mason Gross School of the Arts. Martha Rosler is also an eminent writer on art and culture and is solicited to lecture both nationally in the US and internationally since at least the mid-1970s.
In 2000 Professor Rosler’s oeuvre was the subject of a significant retrospective entitled “Martha Rosler: Positions in the Life World.” It was exhibited in New York at the New Museum and at the International Center of Photography, as well as in five European cities: Birmingham (England), Vienna (Austria), Lyon/Villeurbanne (France), Barcelona (Spain) and Rotterdam (Holland). A book under the same title accompanied the installation in which she clearly demonstrates her inter-related commitments: to bring about a form and expression of art that actively involves a public beyond the traditional boundaries of the art world, but also to examine the ideological, political, economic and social realities and especially how these dominate the everyday life of so-called ordinary people. She stated:
I want to make art about the commonplace, art that illumines social life. I want to enlist art to question the mythical explanations of everyday life that take shape as an optimistic rationalism and to explore the relationships between individual consciousness, family life, and the culture of monopoly capitalism.
Professor Rosler's essays have been extensively published in magazines and catalogs such as Grey Room, Artforum, NU, Quaderns and Afterimage. Her essay on photographic documentary In, Around, and Afterthoughts first written in 1981, was both subsequently republished and translated several times. It is about how people find meaning in photographs and the myths at work when there is a lack thereof. Her writings have also found their way to edited collections such as Women Artists at the Millennium (2006), published by MIT press. Over the years Professor Rosler has been the recipient of quite a few prestigious awards. In 2007 Martha Rosler received the Anonymous Was A Woman Award, then in 2006 she was the recipient of the Oskar Kokoschka Prize, Austria's greatest fine arts honor, as well as the Spectrum International Prize in Photography in 2005.
Additionally, Martha Rosler published over ten books of art and photography. Some include: In the Place of the Public: Observations of a Frequent Flyer (1999), Paul Chan / Martha Rosler (Between Artists) in 2006, and the anticipated Decoys and Disruptions: Selected Essays 1975 - 2001, in 2004 and which was critically acclaimed. For example, as an instance amongst many others, Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art History at Barnard College, Dr. Buchloh wrote:
"Rosler’s writings of the past three decades have acquired an unsought monumental status: they remind us of what it means to conceive of the artist as a public intellectual, as an activist, and as a critical voice in the cultural public sphere. They thus serve as emergency instructions: how activist practice could be resuscitated now, when it is needed most -- in the darkest moment of the near disappearance of public political consciousness."
Because she was a pioneer in that she used different media and combined them in innovative ways, Professor Rosler was considered for a long time to be an underground artist. Martha Rosler’s work focuses on the public sphere as well as daily life, often addressing women's experience. Other concerns that keep coming up in her work include architecture, war, the media, housing, homelessness and even transportation systems. Even though Martha Rosler makes use of a variety of mediums, the ones she uses the most is photo-text and photo-collage.
Martha Roseler’s work has been shown domestically in the US and internationally. Nation wide she has exhibited most at the Museum of Modern Art in New York; the Dia Center for the Arts in New York, Worcester’s Museum of Art. Martha Rosler together with a group of homeless people artists, city planners, architects, and students organized in 1989 the project “If You Lived Here...” The idea was to do what it could to address urban living conditions.
Martha Rosler’s work has been shown almost all over the globe. 2008 brought the works of Martha Rosler to Edinburgh, Scotland. She showed work in Kassel, Germany in 2007. Her own personal book collection even started touring internationally in 2007 under the name “The Martha Rosler Library,” and premiering in New York city. About seventy five hundred books from her private collection temporarily became a public resource. In 2006 her oeuvre became a solo exhibition at the University of Rennes (France). “London Garage Sale,” one of her solo spectacles took place in 2005 at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London. In 2004 the Liverpool Biennial (England) and the Taipei Biennial (China) (both 2004) and in 2003 the Venice Biennale (Italy).
Some of her most famous works are the pioneering videotapes, photo/text works and photomontages spanning several decades. These works of art deal with the geo-political dilemma's of dispossession and entitlement. “Bringing the War Home: House Beautiful,” is a photomontage that is concerned with the visually descriptive aspects of the Vietnam War 1967–72, which she re-iterated in 2004 and 2008 in the context of the War in Iraq. With “Body Beautiful, or Beauty Knows No Pain” the photomontage dealt with the representative photography of women. “The Bowery in two inadequate descriptive systems” (1974/75) is widely considered to be a pioneering departure in postmodern and conceptual photographic practice. Videotapes include the famous “Semiotics of the Kitchen” of 1974 and 1975, and in 1977 “Vital Statistics of a Citizen, Simply Obtained.” Some of Martha Rosler’s other noteworthy publications include interviews such as “Still here: An Interview” (2009) in Art in America *or *“Bringin’ it All Back Home” in frieze (2005). Or even simply “Interview with Martha Rosler” in the journal OCTOBER (1981).
Articles in English include: “Post-Documentary?” in Fanny Knapp Allen Conference (1998) or “Money, Power, Contemporary Art” in Art Bulletin (1997). “The New Times Square” in SuperUmbau (1997). “Documentary, Realism, and Responsibility” in: Beyond Ethics and Aesthetics (1997). “Who's Protecting Whom?” in Plazm (1995). “In the Place of the Public: Observations of a Frequent Flyer” in Assemblage (1995). “Women in Russia–Representations and Realities” in Foto/foto (1994). “Women in Russia–Representations and Reality” in Postphotography (1994). “Place, Position, Power, Politics” in The Subversive Imagination: Artists, Society, and Social Responsibility (1994). “Negotiating New (His)tories of Photography” in Art Jounal (1994). “War in My Work” in Camera Austria International (1994). “Of Soaps, Sperm, and Surrogacy” in Discourse, Journal for Theoretical Studies in Media and Culture (1992-93). “Video/Multiculture” in Felix (1991). “Contribution to ‘Making Art, Making Money’” in Art in America (1990). “Matters of Ownership and Control” in Artist Trust (1990). “Brunch a la Loft” in Art Creating Society, Control (1990). “Image Simulations, Computer Manipulations: Some Ethical Considerations” in Women Artists' Slide Library Journal (1989). “American Art Scene After the Election” in F.Y.I. (New York Foundation for the Arts) (1989). “Contribution to ‘The Global Issue: A Symposium’” in Art in America (1989). “Teaching Photography: The Critical Issue” in New Art Examiner (1989). “Image simulations, Computer Manipulations: Some Considerations” in Afterimage (1989). “New U.S. Video: If It's Too Bad to Be True, It Could Be DISINFORMATION” in Artlink (1988). “Born to Be Sold: Martha Rosler Reads the Strange Case of Baby S/M” in Subjects/Objects (1988). “‘Video Art,’ Its Audience, Its Public” in The Independent. December (1987). “Martha Rosler Reads Vogue” in Profile (1986). “Always in Vogue” in Alternative Media (1986). “Always in Vogue” in Utne Reader (1986). “Contribution to ‘A Critics’ Forum’” in Art Papers (1985).
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