Judith Barry (born 1954) is an American multimedia artist, writer and educator.McQuaid, Cate

''The Boston Globe'', January 26, 2018. Retrieved May 22, 2024.Barry, Judith
''Public Fantasy. An anthology of critical essays, fictions and project descriptions by Judith Barry''
London: ICA, Iwona Blaszwick (ed.), 1991. Retrieved May 27, 2024.Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Judith Barry, Professor
Faculty. Retrieved May 21, 2024. Art critics regard her as a pioneer in

performance art Performance art is an artwork or art exhibition created through actions executed by the artist or other participants. It may be witnessed live or through documentation, spontaneously developed or written, and is traditionally presented to a pu ...

, video, electronic media and

installation art Installation art is an artistic genre of three-dimensional works that are often site-specific art, site-specific and designed to transform the perception of a space. Generally, the term is applied to interior spaces, whereas exterior intervent ...

who has contributed significantly to feminist theories of subjectivity and the exploration of public constructions of gender and identity.Wallis, Brian. "Judith Barry and the Space of Fantasy," in ''Projections: mise-en-abyme'', Brian Wallis and Judith Barry, Vancouver: Presentation House, 1998.Pagel, David
"Entering a Dream State with Judith Barry's Video Installations,"
''Los Angeles Times'', December 22, 2000. Retrieved May 22, 2024.Sangster, Gary. "Articulate Spatial Projections: The Scope of Judith Barry's Video Installation," ''8th Cairo Biennale'', Baltimore, MD: The Contemporary Museum Baltimore, 2001.Morinis, Leora
"Judith Barry,"
Hammer Museum, Artists. Retrieved May 21, 2024. Her work draws on a diverse background, which includes studies in

critical theory Critical theory is a social, historical, and political school of thought and philosophical perspective which centers on analyzing and challenging systemic power relations in society, arguing that knowledge, truth, and social structures are ...

and

cinema Cinema may refer to: Film * Film or movie, a series of still images that create the illusion of moving image ** Film industry, the technological and commercial institutions of filmmaking ** Filmmaking, the process of making a film * Movie theate ...

, dance, and training in architecture, design and computer graphics.Draxler, Helmut. "Ambivalence and Actualization: Judith Barry's Exhibition Design and Artistic Practice," i
''Judith Barry: Body without Limits''
Helmut Draxler, Kate Linker and Javier Panera, Spain: Fundación Salamanca Ciudad de Cultura, 2009. Rather than employ a signature style, Barry combines multiple disciplines and mediums in immersive, research-based works whose common methodology calls into question technologies of representation and the spatial languages of film, urbanism and the art experience.Linker, Kate. "Cinema and Space(s) in the Art of Judith Barry," i
''Judith Barry: Body without Limits''
Helmut Draxler, Kate Linker and Javier Panera, Spain: Fundación Salamanca Ciudad de Cultura, 2009.Drucker, Johanna. "Spectacle & Subjectivity," ''Artscribe'', March-April 1991.Horvat, Katja. "In Conversation with Judith Barry," ''Inter/View'', 2017. Critic Kate Linker wrote, "Barry has examined the effects and ideological functions of images in and on society. Her installations and writings … have charted the transformation of representation by different 'machines' of image production, from the spatial ensembles of theater to computer and electronic technologies." Barry's work belongs to the collections of the

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street (Manhattan), 53rd Street between Fifth Avenue, Fifth and Sixth Avenues. MoMA's collection spans the late 19th century to the present, a ...

(MoMA),Museum of Modern Art
Judith Barry
Artists. Retrieved May 21, 2024.

Centre Pompidou The Centre Pompidou (), more fully the (), also known as the Pompidou Centre in English and colloquially as Beaubourg, is a building complex in Paris, France. It was designed in the style of high-tech architecture by the architectural team of ...

,Centre Pompidou
Judith Barry, ''Space Invaders''
Artists. Retrieved May 21, 2024. MACBA ( Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Barcelona)Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona
Judith Barry
Artists. Retrieved May 21, 2024.

MUMOK Mumok (from the full name ; "Museum of modern art, Ludwig Foundation, Vienna") is a museum in the Museumsquartier in Vienna, Austria. The museum has a collection of 10,000 modern and contemporary art works, including major works from Andy Warh ...

(Austria),Mumok
Judith Barry, ''Voice Off''
Collection. Retrieved May 21, 2024. and

KANAL - Centre Pompidou KANAL - Centre Pompidou is a museum for modern and contemporary art located in Brussels, Belgium, near the Brussels–Charleroi Canal, in the former Citroën Garage buildings. The opening is scheduled for 28 November 2026. During the renovat ...

, among others. She has exhibited at MoMA,Grundberg, Andy
"Judith Barry,"
''The New York Times'', May 16, 1986. Retrieved May 21, 2024.

Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA) is a contemporary art museum with two locations in greater Los Angeles, California. The main branch is located on Grand Avenue in Downtown Los Angeles, near the Walt Disney Concert Hall. MOCA's ori ...

,Brougher, Kerry and Russell Ferguson (eds)
''Art and Film Since 1945: Hall of Mirrors''
Los Angeles: Museum of Contemporary Art, 1996. Retrieved May 27, 2024.

Institute of Contemporary Arts The Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) is an modernism, artistic and cultural centre on The Mall (London), The Mall in London, just off Trafalgar Square. Located within Nash House, part of Carlton House Terrace, near the Duke of York Steps a ...

(London),Wolff, Isabel. "Underground art," ''The Guardian'', June 26, 1991. the

New Museum The New Museum of Contemporary Art is a museum at 235 Bowery, on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1977 by Marcia Tucker. History The museum originally opened in a space in the Graduate Center of the then-nam ...

,Kimmelman, Michael
"Malcolm McLaren Show,"
''The New York Times'', September 16, 1988. Retrieved May 22, 2024.

Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston The Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) is an art museum and exhibition space located in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. The museum was founded as the Boston Museum of Modern Art in 1936. Since then it has gone through multiple name chang ...

,Smee, Sebastian
"The art of the '80s at the ICA,"
''The Boston Globe'', November 15, 2012. Retrieved May 24, 2024.''Artnet''
"Judith Barry launches ICA Boston's Web Art Project,"
March 23, 2003. Retrieved May 27, 2024.

Documenta Documenta (often stylized documenta) is an Art exhibition, exhibition of contemporary art which takes place every five years in Kassel, Germany. Documenta was founded by artist, teacher and curator Arnold Bode in 1955 as part of the Bundesgarte ...

,''Kunstforum International''. "dOCUMENTA (13): The Brain," August/September, 2012. and the biennales of

Berlin Berlin ( ; ) is the Capital of Germany, capital and largest city of Germany, by both area and List of cities in Germany by population, population. With 3.7 million inhabitants, it has the List of cities in the European Union by population withi ...

Sharjah Sharjah (; ', Gulf Arabic: ''aš-Šārja'') is the List of cities in the United Arab Emirates, third-most populous city in the United Arab Emirates, after Dubai and Abu Dhabi. It is the capital of the Emirate of Sharjah and forms part of the D ...

Sydney Sydney is the capital city of the States and territories of Australia, state of New South Wales and the List of cities in Australia by population, most populous city in Australia. Located on Australia's east coast, the metropolis surrounds Syd ...

Venice Venice ( ; ; , formerly ) is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto Regions of Italy, region. It is built on a group of 118 islands that are separated by expanses of open water and by canals; portions of the city are li ...

and the

Whitney Museum The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is a Modern art, modern and Contemporary art, contemporary American art museum located in the Meatpacking District, Manhattan, Meatpacking District and West Village neighbor ...

, among other venues.Vali, Murtaza
"Hale Tenger, Sharjah Biennial, 'September 11,'"
''Artforum'', 2011 Retrieved May 21, 2024.Mammi, Alessandra
"Venezia 43: Unter Den Linden,"
''Artforum'', September 1988. Retrieved May 21, 2024.Cameron, Dan. “Whitney Biennial," ''Flash Art'', Summer 1987. Barry has received a

Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are Grant (money), grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, endowed by the late Simon Guggenheim, Simon and Olga Hirsh Guggenheim. These awards are bestowed upon indiv ...

, Frederick and Lillian Kiesler Prize and

Anonymous Was A Woman Award The Anonymous Was A Woman Award is a grant program for women artists who are over 40 years of age, in part to counter sexism in the art world. It began in 1996 in direct response to the National Endowment for the Arts' decision to stop funding i ...

.John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation
Judith Barry
Fellows. Retrieved May 21, 2024.Anonymous Was A Woman Award
Recipients
Retrieved May 21, 2024.Austrian Frederick and Lillian Kiesler Private Foundation
Kiesler Prize 2000: Judith Barry
Retrieved May 21, 2024. She is based in New York and is a professor and in the

MIT Program in Art, Culture and Technology The MIT Program in Art, Culture and Technology (ACT) has its origins in the Center for Advanced Visual Studies (CAVS) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), an arts and research center founded in 1967 by artist and teacher György Kepes ...

.Cook, Greg. "New Public Art at Gardner Museum Aims To Bring Attention To Refugee Crisis," ''Wonderland'', January 18, 2018.

Early life and career

Barry was born in 1954 in

Columbus, Ohio Columbus (, ) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital and List of cities in Ohio, most populous city of the U.S. state of Ohio. With a 2020 United States census, 2020 census population of 905,748, it is the List of United States ...

. She pursued early interests in architecture and dance after moving to the San Francisco Bay Area in 1974. She studied architecture and cinema at the

University of California at Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after the Anglo-Irish philosopher George Berkele ...

while also exploring dance, performance art and video—then-marginal art forms that offered greater opportunities to women. In the latter 1970s, she was active in modern dance companies and

feminist art The feminist art movement refers to the efforts and accomplishments of feminists internationally to produce feminist art, art that reflects women's lives and experiences, as well as to change the foundation for the production and perception of co ...

collectives in San Francisco and at the

Woman's Building The Woman's Building was a non-profit arts and education center located in Los Angeles, California. The Woman's Building focused on feminist art and served as a venue for the women's movement and was spearheaded by artist Judy Chicago, graphic de ...

in Los Angeles.Grundberg, Andy
"Beyond Still Imagery,"
''The New York Times'', April 7, 1985. Retrieved May 21, 2024.Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago
Judith Barry
Publications. Retrieved May 21, 2024. Barry's performance works engaged themes involving

voyeurism Voyeurism is the sexual interest in or practice of watching other people engaged in intimate behaviors, such as undressing, sexual activity, or other actions of a private nature. The term comes from the French ''voir'' which means "to see". ...

and women's role as subject and object of the erotic gaze. They often situated her own body as the site of conceptual and visual experiment.Marzo, Jorge Luís
Judith Barry
Fundació La Caixa, Artists. Retrieved May 21, 2024. After pushing her art toward installation, she moved to New York in the 1980s, continuing her work in exhibition design, multimedia and new digital technologies. In 1987, she earned an MA in communication arts and computer graphics from the

New York Institute of Technology The New York Institute of Technology (NYIT or New York Tech) is a Private university, private research university, research university founded in 1955. It has two main campuses in New York (state), New York—one in Old Westbury, on Long I ...

.Perron, Jacques
"Judith Barry,"
Fondation Daniel Langlois, 2006. Retrieved May 24, 2024.

Work and critical reception

Barry's work has links to conceptual art, feminist performance art, critical theory and cinema studies. In addition to multimedia installations, video, exhibition design and performance, she has produced sculpture, photography, graphic and drawing projects. She frequently engages viewers through visually immersive environments employing new technologies. Her formal strategies draw upon critical analysis, architectural form and cinematic spectacle to consider subjects such as the body, perception, language, and the role of urban planning and visual technologies in shaping identity, gender and social paradigms.Avgikos, Jan
"Judith Barry,"
''Artforum'', February 1992. Retrieved March 24, 2024.Tarantino, Michael
"Judith Barry,"
''Artforum'', September 1992. Retrieved May 21, 2024. Critics define Barry's practice as much in relation to cultural theory and methodology as through aesthetic issues. Brian Wallis wrote that unlike the work of contemporaries delving into gender (e.g.,

Cindy Sherman Cynthia Morris Sherman (born January 19, 1954) is an American artist whose work consists primarily of photographic self-portraits, depicting herself in many different contexts and as various imagined characters. Her breakthrough work is often co ...

Barbara Kruger Barbara Kruger (born January 26, 1945) is an American conceptual artist and collagist associated with the Pictures Generation. She is most known for her visual word art that consists of black-and-white photographs, overlaid with declarative ca ...

), Barry's work is "constantly shifting styles and formats, while consistently probing a series of tough theoretical issues." Among concerns identified are: relationships between display, looking, projection, desire and social control;Kruger, Barbara
"Casual Shopper by Judith Barry,"
''Artforum'', March 1983. Retrieved May 22, 2024.Linker, Kate
"Eluding Definition,"
''Artforum'', December 1984. Retrieved May 22, 2024. the influence of architectural space and urban planning on identity, social behavior and power relations; insertion of the corporeal and kinesthetic into visually dominated discourses;Heister, Andrea. "Judith Barry 'body without limits'," ''kunsttexte.de'', No. 1, 2010. insistence on a participatory, meaning-productive spectator; emerging technologies and new configurations of space and social life; and the presentation of underrepresented individual stories and histories.ElGenaidi, Deena
"A Window Into the Lives of Women Living in Cairo,"
''Hyperallergic'', October 25, 2018. Retrieved May 22, 2024.

Individual works and installations

Visual theorist

Johanna Drucker Johanna Drucker (born May 30, 1952) is an American author, book artist, visual theorist, and cultural critic. Her scholarly writing documents and critiques visual language: letterforms, typography, visual poetry, art, and lately, digital art a ...

identified "voyeurism, spectacle, the power of display and the seductive apparatus of projection" as central to Barry's work—themes evident in her early video, ''Casual Shopper'' (1981–82). An historical analogue to

Walter Benjamin Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin ( ; ; 15 July 1892 – 26 September 1940) was a German-Jewish philosopher, cultural critic, media theorist, and essayist. An eclectic thinker who combined elements of German idealism, Jewish mysticism, Western M ...

's ''

Arcades Project ''Das Passagen-Werk'' or ''Arcades Project'' was an unfinished project of German philosopher and cultural critic Walter Benjamin, written between 1927 and his death in 1940. An enormous collection of writings on the city life of Paris in the 19t ...

'', it mapped the transformation of the arcade into the synthetic space of the contemporary shopping mall. Barry's protagonist was a counterpart to Benjamin's male '' flaneur'' (roughly, "stroller")—a female ''flaneuse'' whose aimless attention to goods and an elusive man control the narrative and action, counter to the traditional dominance of the

male gaze In feminist theory, the male gaze is the act of depicting women and the world in the visual arts and in literature from a masculine, heterosexual perspective that presents and represents women as sexual objects for the pleasure of the heterosex ...

theorized by

Laura Mulvey Laura Mulvey (born 15 August 1941) is a British feminist film theorist and filmmaker. She was educated at St Hilda's College, Oxford. She is currently professor of film and media studies at Birkbeck, University of London. She previously taught ...

. Critics linked the work's use of

montage Montage may refer to: Arts and entertainment Filmmaking and films * Montage (filmmaking), a technique in film editing * ''Montage'' (2013 film), a South Korean film Music * Montage (music), or sound collage * ''Montage'' (EP), a 2017 EP by ...

, persistent browsing and endless commercial space to ideas concerning cinema's recycling of unsated desire and the narcissistic pursuit of satisfaction through consumption. Projection as a metaphor—both its physical sense and the psychological projection of images and fantasies—figured prominently in video installations by Barry that extended the imaginative space of cinema to architectural space, challenging notions of public versus private, and psychic versus social. ''In the Shadow of the City Vamp r y'' (Artists Space and Whitney Biennial, 1985) and ''Echo'' (MoMA, 1986) considered the redevelopment of urban space and its disconnection from lived experience, shared community and historical grounding, suggesting a failure by

modernist Modernism was an early 20th-century movement in literature, visual arts, and music that emphasized experimentation, abstraction, and Subjectivity and objectivity (philosophy), subjective experience. Philosophy, politics, architecture, and soc ...

architecture to deliver on promises of social liberation.Morse, Margaret. "Judith Barry: The Body in Space," ''Art in America'', April 1993, p. 118. Both large-scale, double-sided projections, they melded imagery of shopping malls and high-rise exteriors and interiors with window-like insertions of fragmented film narratives. Critics suggested that ''In the Shadow …'''s combination of anonymous looking and beckoning views invoked voyeuristic desire in "ceaselessly consuming," vampire-like spectators hungry for images. ''Echo'' (referencing the

Echo and Narcissus Echo and Narcissus is a myth from Ovid's ''Metamorphoses (poem), Metamorphoses'', a Roman literature, Roman classical mythology, mythological epic poetry, epic from the Augustan literature (ancient Rome), Augustan Age. The introduction of the ...

myth) depicted archetypal businessmen trapped and staring out of gridded glass structures that reviewer Andy Grundberg wrote, evoked "the anonymity and anomie of corporate work places, and the narcissism of those who inhabit them."Fisher, Jean
"Judith Barry,"
''Artforum'', September 1986. Retrieved May 21, 2024. Barry's use of contradictory vantage points inside and outside the same physical and visual spaces in those works highlights her emphasis on kinesthetic and perceptual rather than idealized visual paradigms (e.g., perspectival vision) for meaning-making—an approach that often requires spectators to navigate physical parameters and conflicting modes of signification.Newman, Michael. "Judith Barry," ''100 Video Artists'', R. Oliveras (ed.). Madrid: Exit, 2010. For example, in ''Model for Stage and Screen'' (1987), she considered the functional effects of architecture, asking spectators to step into a large circular chamber containing a glowing pillar of green light. Upon exiting, rather than return to normal vision they experienced a purely perceptual, intense series of afterimages, suspending them between different ways of "seeing." For ''The Work of the Forest'' (1992) Barry used three synchronized video tracks on transparent screens to consider the conflicting histories of African art, Art Nouveau and the Belgian Congo; the continuous panorama of imagery undercut the visual coherence of monocular perspective, potentially stimulating multiple subject positions and interpretations. In ''Voice off'' (1998–99) she emphasized sound and bodily movement with back-to-back projections of metaphoric narratives: one of a dream-like, possibly imaginary, performance and the other of a male writer haunted by and unable to locate the source of its voices. She employed a scrim on one side of the screen allowing viewers to move between the separated narratives, spatializing the film convention of shot and counter shot, while exploiting the power of suggestion and visualization created through voice and sound.Frac Lorraine
Judith Barry, ''Voice Off''
Collection. Retrieved May 21, 2024. ''Imagination, dead imagine'' (Fundació La Caixa and Nicole Klagsbrun, 1991;

Mary Boone Gallery Mary Boone (born 1952) is an American art dealer and collector. As the owner and director of the Mary Boone Gallery, she played an important role in the New York art market of the 1980s. Her first two artists, Julian Schnabel and David Salle, b ...

, 2018) emphasized movement, but more insistently, foregrounded a visceral, corporeal "infection" of its own pristine form and exhibition space.Geers, David
"Judith Barry,"
''Frieze'', June 20, 2017. Retrieved May 22, 2024. The installation consisted of a 10-foot mirrored cube wrapped with four (or five) rear-projection screens depicting a seemingly caged, androgynous head (in frontal, back and profile views) being successively flooded with muck resembling bodily fluids and insects, with each defilement followed by a video wipe restoring a cleansed face.Hagen, Charles

''The New York Times'', October 25, 1991. Retrieved May 21, 2024.Wilson, Michael. "Judith Barry, 'imagination, dead imagine'," ''Time Out'', June 9, 2017. Made at the height of the

AIDS crisis The global pandemic of HIV/AIDS (human immunodeficiency virus infection and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome) began in 1981, and is an ongoing worldwide public health issue. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), by 2023, HIV/AIDS ...

and that era's terror of bodily fluids, it referenced work by writers

Samuel Beckett Samuel Barclay Beckett (; 13 April 1906 – 22 December 1989) was an Irish writer of novels, plays, short stories, and poems. Writing in both English and French, his literary and theatrical work features bleak, impersonal, and Tragicomedy, tra ...

and

J. G. Ballard James Graham Ballard (15 November 193019 April 2009) was an English novelist and short-story writer, satirist and essayist known for psychologically provocative works of fiction that explore the relations between human psychology, technology, s ...

, theorist

Julia Kristeva Julia Kristeva (; ; born Yuliya Stoyanova Krasteva, ; on 24 June 1941) is a Bulgarian-French philosopher, literary critic, semiotician, psychoanalyst, feminist, and novelist who has lived in France since the mid-1960s. She has taught at Colum ...

's concept of the

abject In critical theory, abjection is the state of being cast off and separated from norms and rules, especially on the scale of society and morality. The term has been explored in post-structuralism as that which inherently disturbs conventional ident ...

and

Robert Morris Robert or Bob Morris may refer to: :''Ordered chronologically within each section.'' Politics and the law * Robert Hunter Morris (1700–1764), lieutenant governor of Colonial Pennsylvania * Robert Morris (financier) (1734–1806), one of the Foun ...

minimalist In visual arts, music, and other media, minimalism is an art movement that began in the post-war era in western art. The movement is often interpreted as a reaction to abstract expressionism and modernism; it anticipated contemporary post-mi ...

mirrored cubes.Morris, Susan
"Judith Barry's Imagination, dead imagine references horror films and J.G. Ballard,"
''The Architect's Newspaper'', July 7, 2017. Retrieved May 21, 2024. Charles Hagen of ''The New York Times'' described its narrative dimension as "exploring the charged territory, prominent in infantile psychology, where the erotic and the scatological overlap … as the mammoth, enigmatic head suffers the plague of indignities … with a compelling, almost heroic impassiveness." In later works, Barry often considered emerging digital and electronic technologies and the displacement of "real" places, architectural forms and grounded observers in favor of virtual spaces, screens and "users." In ''Rouen: Touring machines/Intermittent Futures'' (1993), she combined fiber-optics, the book and video projection to create a shifting

cyberspace Cyberspace is an interconnected digital environment. It is a type of virtual world popularized with the rise of the Internet. The term entered popular culture from science fiction and the arts but is now used by technology strategists, security ...

/fictional guidebook of immaterial images connecting cultures, places, times and literature prompted by the history of

Rouen Rouen (, ; or ) is a city on the River Seine, in northwestern France. It is in the prefecture of Regions of France, region of Normandy (administrative region), Normandy and the Departments of France, department of Seine-Maritime. Formerly one ...

, France. ''Speedflesh'' (1998,

Wexner Center The Wexner Center for the Arts is the Ohio State University's "multidisciplinary, international laboratory for the exploration and advancement of contemporary art." The Wexner Center is a lab and public gallery, but not an art museum, as it doe ...

) was described by curator

Sarah Perks Sarah Perks is an international curator and producer of contemporary visual art, independent film, and engagement. She served as the Artistic Director for Visual Arts and Film at HOME, the centre for international contemporary arts, theatre, and ...

as "part computer game, cinematic and narrative inquiry, art installation and immersive experience"; its science-fiction narrative structure explored the digital realm in relation to technologies of the body.Perks, Sarah. "The Dynamics of Desire: Judith Barry in conversation with Sarah Perks," ''Electronic Superhighway'', London: Whitechapel Gallery, 2016. For ''All the light that's ours to see'' (2020), Barry installed two screens sharing a common vanishing point, using disrupted, cross-cutting narratives to examine the shift from collective cinematic experience to the private, domestic practice of streaming.Valentina, Barbara. "All the Light that's ours to see," ''Umbigo Magazine'', December 2020.

"Not Reconciled" series and related projects

In projects such as ''Border Stories'' (2001/2006) and ''Cairo Stories'' (2003–11), Barry focused on the narratives of individuals from diverse cultures and their formation in relation to the politics of nation-states. Situated between documentary and drama, these videos and installations developed out of interviews which she translated, edited and re-presented using actors to protect interviewees' anonymity. ''Border Stories'' was a site-specific video installation originally projected in the windows of an abandoned San Diego bank with four distinct narratives staged according to a pedestrian's movement down the street; it explored social positioning in urban and domestic space, particularly with regard to class. It was an extension of Barry's earlier installation, ''Not Reconciled: First and Third'' (Whitney Biennial, 1987) a series of video portraits examining immigration, migration and race relations in the US. Inserted as hovering talking heads in a darkened stairwell entry using concealed projection apparatus, it called into question the exclusion of certain groups from cultural spaces and narratives of the American dream.Smith, Roberta
"Questions of Rhetoric, Empty and Otherwise,"
''The New York Times'', December 28, 1990. Retrieved May 24, 2024. Barry produced differently themed projects in that series in London, Rotterdam, Corsica and Cairo.Barry, Judith. "not reconciled", ''October'', Summer 1995. ''Cairo Stories'' (Sharjah Biennial, 2011) was developed collaboratively from video interviews of more than 200 Cairene women of different social and economic classes between the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq and the

2011 Egyptian Revolution The 2011 Egyptian revolution, also known as the 25 January Revolution (;), began on 25 January 2011 and spread across Egypt. The date was set by various youth groups to coincide with the annual Egyptian "Police holiday" as a statement against ...

.Burkhardt, Kathy
"The Artists' Artists,"
''Artforum'', December 2018. Retrieved May 22, 2024. The resulting video and photographic portraits chronicled largely untold stories ranging across political hope and empowerment, the complexities of family life and class, and personal hardship. She took a different approach with ''Untitled: (Global displacement: nearly 1 in 100 people worldwide are displaced from their homes)'' (2018), an intricate digital collage displayed as a three-story banner on the façade of the

Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum is an art museum in Boston, Massachusetts, which houses significant examples of European, Asian, and American art. Its collection includes paintings, sculpture, tapestries, and decorative arts. It was found ...

. Prompted by drone photos of people adrift in precarious boats that proliferated during the

2015 European migrant crisis The 2015 European migrant crisis was a period of significantly increased movement of refugees and migrants into Europe, mostly from the Middle East. An estimated 1.3 million people came to the continent to request asylum, the most in a single ...

, Barry recast the scenario with images she took of museum goers looking up and smiling, then superimposed a 2016 Pew Center report headline (the title), connecting viewers to people displaced by disasters around the world and in the U.S.

Exhibition design

Since the mid-1980s, Barry has created designs for group and themed exhibitions and her own solo shows, often in collaboration with designer Ken Saylor.Rimanelli, David
"a/drift,"
''Artforum'', February 1997. Retrieved May 24, 2024. Her exhibition design draws upon diverse historical sources: the displays of

El Lissitzky El Lissitzky (, born Lazar Markovich Lissitzky , ; – 30 December 1941), was a Soviet Jewish artist, active as a painter, illustrator, designer, printmaker, photographer, and architect. He was an important figure of the Russian avant-garde, h ...

, the 1950s British

Independent Group Independent Group may refer to: *Independent Group (art movement), a group of artists *Independent Group (Kenya), a defunct political party in Kenya *Independent Group (Solomon Islands), a political faction in the Solomon Islands *Independent Group ...

and 19th-century natural history museum

diorama A diorama is a replica of a scene, typically a three-dimensional model either full-sized or miniature. Sometimes dioramas are enclosed in a glass showcase at a museum. Dioramas are often built by hobbyists as part of related hobbies like mili ...

s, among others. Critics nave noted its subversion of artworld conventions, interactivity, unexpected juxtapositions of art, pop-culture and architectural elements, and influence on

institutional critique In art, institutional critique is the systematic inquiry into the workings of art institutions, such as galleries and museums, and is most associated with the work of artists like Michael Asher (artist), Michael Asher, Marcel Broodthaers, Daniel B ...

installation art.Grundberg, Andy
"Focusing on Televisions As Objects, Not Media,"
''The New York Times'', September 14, 1990. Retrieved May 22, 2024. Art historian Helmut Draxler wrote that Barry's work positioned "exhibition design as an independent form of artistic practice … put

ing Ing, ING or ing may refer to: Art and media * '' ...ing'', a 2003 Korean film * i.n.g, a Taiwanese girl group * The Ing, a race of dark creatures in the 2004 video game '' Metroid Prime 2: Echoes'' * "Ing", the first song on The Roches' 199 ...

classical methods of design and visual communication in the service of critical art." Among prominent shows she designed or co-designed are: "Damaged Goods" (1986), "

Malcolm McLaren Malcolm Robert Andrew McLaren (22 January 1946 – 8 April 2010) was an English fashion designer and music manager. He was a promoter and a manager for punk rock and new wave bands such as New York Dolls, Sex Pistols, Adam and the Ants, and ...

and the British New Wave" (1988), "From Receiver to Remote Control: the TV Set" (1990) and "alt.youth.media" (1996) at the

; "The Desire of the Museum" (1989, Whitney Museum); "Channeling Spain" (2010, Arts Santa Monica, Barcelona); and the multi-installation survey of her own work, "Judith Barry: Body without Limits" (Domus Artium, 2008; Berardo Museum (2010).Raynor, Vivien
"Objects Are Subject of 'Damaged Goods,'"
''The New York Times'', July 18, 1986. Retrieved May 22, 2024.Barry, Judith
"Judith Barry,"
''The Brooklyn Rail'', March 2015. Retrieved May 27, 2024.

Writing and teaching

Barry's essays, theoretical texts and projects have appeared in anthologies,Barry, Judith. "Casual Imagination," i
''Blasted Allegories: An Anthology of Artists' Writings ''
Brian Wallis (ed.), Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1987. exhibition catalogues,Smith, Roberta. "'Fictions,' Views of the Future and the Past," ''The New York Times'', December 11, 1987.Barry, Judith. "Media & Me," ''Are you Ready for TV?'', Barcelona: Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, 2010. and art periodicals including ''Architect's Newspaper'',Barry, Judith and Ken Saylor
"Judith Barry and Ken Saylor,"
''The Architect's Newspaper'', August 27, 2015. Retrieved May 27, 2024. ''Artforum'',''Artforum''
"Judith Barry,"
Author. Retrieved May 27, 2024. ''Aperture'',Barry, Judith. "First and Third: a history lesson," ''Aperture'', Spring 1988. ''Art & Text'',Barry, Judith. "The Work of the Forest," ''Art & Text'', Spring 1992. ''The Brooklyn Rail'', ''Mousse'',Barry, Judith
"Judith Barry,"
''Mousse'', March 2012. Retrieved May 27, 2024. ''October'', and ''

REALLIFE Magazine ''REALLIFE Magazine'' was a publication featuring written and visual material by and about young artists that was co-founded and published by artist Thomas Lawson and writer Susan Morgan between 1979 and 1994.Printed Matter''REAL LIFE Magazine'' ...

'',Barry, Judith. "Building Conventions," ''Real Life Magazine'', Summer 1981. She contributed the essay "Casual Imagination" to the anthology ''Blasted Allegories'' (1987). In 1991, the Institute of Contemporary Arts published a collection of her essays titled, ''Public Fantasy''. Barry has been a professor in the MIT Program in Art, Culture and Technology since 2017. From 2004 to 2017, she was a professor and director of Lesley University's College of Art & Design. She also taught at

Cooper Union The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, commonly known as Cooper Union, is a private college on Cooper Square in Lower Manhattan, New York City. Peter Cooper founded the institution in 1859 after learning about the government-s ...

and the

Merz Akademie Merz Akademie is a non-profit university of Arts, art, design, and Media studies, media, located in the Berg Kulturpark of Stuttgart, Germany and was established in 1985. Its roots lie in the "Free Academy for Recognition and Design" founded i ...

in Germany.

Recognition

Barry received a Guggenheim Fellowship (2011), an Anonymous Was A Woman Award (2001) and the Frederick and Lillian Kiesler Prize for Architecture and the Arts (2000). She has been awarded grants from the Daniel Langlois Foundation,

National Endowment for the Arts The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created in 1965 as an independent agency of the feder ...

New York State Council on the Arts The New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) serves to foster and advance the arts, culture, and creativity throughout New York State, according to its website. The goal of the council is to allow all New Yorkers to benefit from the contribution ...

New York Foundation for the Arts The New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) is an independent 501(c)(3) charity, funded through government, foundation, corporate, and individual support, established in 1971. It is part of a network of national not-for-profit arts organizations ...

, and Art Matters.New York Foundation for the Arts
"Triacontagon: A Celebration of 30 Years of the Artists' Fellowship Program,"
July 30, 2015. Retrieved May 21, 2024.Art Matters
Grant Program 1987
Retrieved May 21, 2024. In 1995 she received a residency in video at the Wexner Center for the Arts, and in 2016, a commission from

HOME A home, or domicile, is a space used as a permanent or semi-permanent residence for one or more human occupants, and sometimes various companion animals. Homes provide sheltered spaces, for instance rooms, where domestic activity can be p ...

(UK).Wexner Center for the Arts
"Judith Barry,"
Artist Residency. Retrieved May 24, 2024. She represented the U.S. in the Cairo Biennale in 2001 and received the event's Best Pavilion award.

Collections

Barry's work is held internationally in the public collections of the Centre Pompidou, Cisneros Fontanais Art Foundation (CIFO),Cisneros Fontanais Art Foundation
"CIFO presents The Prisoner's Dilemma: Selections from the Ella Fontanals-Cisneros Collection,"
October 17, 2008. Retrieved May 21, 2024.

Dia Art Foundation Dia Art Foundation is a nonprofit organization that initiates, supports, presents, and preserves art projects. It was established in 1974 by Philippa de Menil, the daughter of Houston arts patron Dominique de Menil and an heiress to the Schlumbe ...

,Dia Art Foundation
Judith Barry
Collection. Retrieved May 24, 2024. Frac Lorraine, Fundació La Caixa,

Generali Foundation The Generali Foundation was established in 1988 by the Generali Group Austria as a private and non-profit-making art association for the promotion of contemporary art. Situated in Vienna, Austria, it is one of the important museums specialised in ...

(Austria),Generali Foundation
Judith Barry
Collection. Retrieved May 21, 2024.

Hammer Museum The Hammer Museum, which is affiliated with the University of California, Los Angeles, is an art museum and cultural center known for its artist-centric and progressive array of exhibitions and public programs. Founded in 1990 by the entrepreneur- ...

,Hammer Museum
Judith Barry
Artists. Retrieved May 21, 2024.

Kadist KADIST is an interdisciplinary contemporary arts organization with an international contemporary art collection. KADIST hosts artist residencies and produces exhibitions, publications, and public events. Founded by Vincent Worms and Sandra Te ...

,Kadist
Judith Barry
Artists. Retrieved May 21, 2024. MACBA, Museum of Modern Art,

Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego The Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego (MCASD) is an art museum in La Jolla La Jolla ( , ) is a hilly, seaside neighborhood in San Diego, California, occupying of curving coastline along the Pacific Ocean. The population reported in the ...

,Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego
Judith Barry
Artists. Retrieved May 21, 2024. MUMOK,

National Gallery of Canada The National Gallery of Canada (), located in the capital city of Ottawa, Ontario, is Canada's National museums of Canada, national art museum. The museum's building takes up , with of space used for exhibiting art. It is one of the List of large ...

,National Gallery of Canada
Judith Barry
Artists. Retrieved May 21, 2024. Netherlands Media Art Institute,Netherlands Media Art Institute
Resonance
Retrieved May 21, 2024. Sammlung Goetz,Sammlung Goetz
Voice off, Judith Barry
Collection. Retrieved May 24, 2024. and

, among others.

References

External links

Judith Barry official websiteCairo stories
Judith Barry
Judith Barry
Museum of Modern Art (MOMA)
"Art In a Digital Landscape: In Conversation with Judith Barry,"
''Boston Art Review''
Judith Barry
John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation
Judith Barry, Professor
Massachusetts Institute of Technology {{DEFAULTSORT:Barry, Judith 21st-century American women artists 20th-century American women artists American contemporary artists American video artists 1954 births Living people New York Institute of Technology alumni