Sadie T. Benning (born April 11, 1973) is an American artist, who has worked primarily in

video Video is an Electronics, electronic medium for the recording, copying, playback, broadcasting, and display of moving picture, moving image, visual Media (communication), media. Video was first developed for mechanical television systems, whi ...

painting Painting is a Visual arts, visual art, which is characterized by the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called "matrix" or "Support (art), support"). The medium is commonly applied to the base with ...

drawing Drawing is a Visual arts, visual art that uses an instrument to mark paper or another two-dimensional surface, or a digital representation of such. Traditionally, the instruments used to make a drawing include pencils, crayons, and ink pens, some ...

sculpture Sculpture is the branch of the visual arts that operates in three dimensions. Sculpture is the three-dimensional art work which is physically presented in the dimensions of height, width and depth. It is one of the plastic arts. Durable sc ...

photography Photography is the visual arts, art, application, and practice of creating images by recording light, either electronically by means of an image sensor, or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film. It is empl ...

and

sound In physics, sound is a vibration that propagates as an acoustic wave through a transmission medium such as a gas, liquid or solid. In human physiology and psychology, sound is the ''reception'' of such waves and their ''perception'' by the br ...

. Benning creates experimental films and explores a variety of themes including surveillance, gender, ambiguity, transgression, play, intimacy, and identity. They became a known artist as a teenager, with their short films made with a PixelVision camera that have been described as "video diaries". Benning was a co-founder and a former member of the American

electronic rock Electronic rock (also known as electro rock and synth rock) is a music genre that involves a combination of rock music and electronic music, featuring instruments typically found within both genres. It originates from the late 1960s when rock b ...

band

Le Tigre Le Tigre (, ; French for "The Tiger") is an American art punk and riot grrrl band formed by Kathleen Hanna (of Bikini Kill), Johanna Fateman and Sadie Benning in 1998 in New York City. Benning left in 2000 and was replaced by JD Samson. ...

, from 1998 until 2001.

Early life

Sadie Benning was born April 11, 1973, in Madison,

Wisconsin Wisconsin ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Great Lakes region, Great Lakes region of the Upper Midwest of the United States. It borders Minnesota to the west, Iowa to the southwest, Illinois to the south, Lake Michigan to the east, Michig ...

. Benning was raised by their mother in inner-city

Milwaukee Milwaukee is the List of cities in Wisconsin, most populous city in the U.S. state of Wisconsin. Located on the western shore of Lake Michigan, it is the List of United States cities by population, 31st-most populous city in the United States ...

. Their parents divorced before they were born, their father is film director James Benning. Benning left high school at age 16 due to

homophobia Homophobia encompasses a range of negative attitudes and feelings toward homosexuality or people who identify or are perceived as being lesbian, Gay men, gay or bisexual. It has been defined as contempt, prejudice, aversion, hatred, or ant ...

. They have identified as

non-binary Non-binary or genderqueer Gender identity, gender identities are those that are outside the male/female gender binary. Non-binary identities often fall under the transgender umbrella since non-binary people typically identify with a gende ...

Work

Early work

Benning began creating visual works at age 15, they started filming with the "toy" video camera they received as a Christmas gift from their father, the experimental filmmaker James Benning. Benning used a Fisher-Price PXL-2000 camera, also known as PixelVision, which created pixelated black and white video on standard audio cassette tapes. At first, Benning was standoffish to the PixelVision camera and is quoted as saying, "I thought, 'This is a piece of shit. It's black-and-white. It's for kids. He'd told me I was getting this surprise. I was expecting a camcorder." They made four short films and brought them to their father's film class he was teaching at Cal Arts, and they screened the films for the first time in front of a class. One of the students put one of the films in a film festival he was organizing. By the age of 19, they had shown their films at 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 ...

in New York City, the Sundance Institute, and at international film festivals.

Themes

The majority of Benning's shorts combined performance, experimental narrative, handwriting, and cut-up music to explore, among other subjects, gender and sexuality. Benning's work has been included in the

Whitney Biennial The Whitney Biennial is a biennial exhibition of contemporary American art organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City. The event began as an annual exhibition in 1932; the first biennial was held in 1973. It is considered ...

on four occasions (1993, 2000, 2006), and they were the youngest artist included in the well-known and controversial 1993 Whitney Biennial. Benning's earlier videos – ''A New Year'', ''Living Inside'', ''Me and Rubyfruit'', ''Jollies'', and ''If Every Girl Had a Diary ''- used Benning's isolated surroundings and the effect this had on Benning as a focus for their theme. In Benning's earliest work, ''A New Year'', Benning shied away from being in front of the camera, instead focusing on their surroundings – primarily the confines of their room and bedroom window – to portray their feelings of angst, confusion and alienation. "I don't talk, I'm not physically in it, it's all handwritten text, music; I wanted to substitute objects, things that were around me, to illustrate the events. I used objects in the closest proximity – the television, toys, my dog, whatever." The themes of sexual identity and the challenges of growing up are repeated throughout the body of Benning's work, who self-identified as a

lesbian A lesbian is a homosexual woman or girl. The word is also used for women in relation to their sexual identity or sexual behavior, regardless of sexual orientation, or as an adjective to characterize or associate nouns with female homosexu ...

in 2014. Benning's video '' Me and Rubyfruit'' is referred to as their "first video to be presented as a coming-out narrative". Benning uses pop culture, such as music, television or newspapers, to amplify their message while simultaneously parodying the same pop culture. Benning also draws inspiration from images on television or in movies, observing: "They're totally fake and constructed to entertain and oppress at the same time – they're meaningless to women, and not just to gay women. I got started partly because I needed different images and I never wanted to wait for someone to do it for me". The use of a variety of media in their work gives insight to the viewer on how Benning has been mostly interacting with the world. As their work has progressed, Benning has increasingly used images of their own body and voice. In works such as ''If Every Girl Had a Diary'', Benning uses the limitations of the PixelVision to get extreme closeups of their own face, eyes, fingers, and other extremities so that the focus is on sections of their face as they narrate their life and thoughts. In 1998, the English Professor Mia Carter observed: "Benning's daring autoerotic and autobiographic videos,

heir Inheritance is the practice of receiving private property, titles, debts, entitlements, privileges, rights, and obligations upon the death of an individual. The rules of inheritance differ among societies and have changed over time. Offi ...

ability to make the camera seem a part of

self, and extension of

body, invite the audience to know

hem A hem in sewing is a garment finishing method, where the edge of a piece of cloth is folded and sewn to prevent unravelling of the fabric and to adjust the length of the piece in garments, such as at the end of the sleeve or the bottom of the ga ...

Later work

Benning entered

Bard College Bard College is a private college, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. The campus overlooks the Hudson River and Catskill Mountains within the Hudson River Historic District ...

in 2013 and graduated two years later with a MFA degree, where they now work as faculty. Their work is in various public museum collections including the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), the Whitney Museum, the

Smithsonian American Art Museum The Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM; formerly the National Museum of American Art) is a museum in Washington, D.C., part of the Smithsonian Institution. Together with its branch museum, the Renwick Gallery, SAAM holds one of the world's lar ...

, and Albright-Knox Art Gallery, among others.

Music

In 1998, Benning co-founded

, the feminist post-punk band whose members include ex-

Bikini Kill Bikini Kill is an American punk rock band formed in Olympia, Washington, in October 1990. The group originally consisted of singer and songwriter Kathleen Hanna, guitarist Billy Karren, bassist Kathi Wilcox, and drummer Tobi Vail. The band pio ...

singer/guitarist Kathleen Hanna and zinester

Johanna Fateman Johanna Rachel Fateman (born May 16, 1974) is an American writer, songwriter, musician, and record producer. She is a member of the electropunk band Le Tigre and founded the band MEN (band), MEN with Le Tigre bandmate JD Samson. Early life an ...

. Benning left the band in 2001 and JD Samson joined Le Tigre after Benning's departure.

Exhibitions

Works

Awards, recognition, and honors

In 1991, the first article about Benning's work, written by

Ellen Spiro Ellen Spiro is an American documentary filmmaker. She is a producer and director of the television documentary '' Are the Kids Alright?'', which won an Emmy Award in 2005. Spiro is a professor at the University of Texas at Austin, where she h ...

, appeared in the national gay magazine ''

The Advocate An advocate is a professional in the field of law. The Advocate, The Advocates or Advocate may also refer to: Magazines * The Advocate (magazine), ''The Advocate'' (magazine), an LGBT magazine based in the United States * ''The Harvard Advocate' ...

''. In 2004, Bill Horrigan curated a retrospective of Benning's works on video. In 2009, Chloe Hope Johnson contributed a chapter in the book ''There She Goes: Feminist Filmmaking and Beyond (Contemporary Approaches to Film and Media Series)'' entitled Becoming-Grrrl ''The Voice and Videos of Sadie Benning.'' Benning has received grants and fellowships from

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 ...

(2005) by the

John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation is a private foundation formed in 1925 by Olga and Simon Guggenheim in memory of their son, who died on April 26, 1922. The organization awards Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are Gr ...

Rockefeller Foundation The Rockefeller Foundation is an American private foundation and philanthropic medical research and arts funding organization based at 420 Fifth Avenue, New York City. The foundation was created by Standard Oil magnate John D. Rockefeller (" ...

grant (1992), Andrea Frank Foundation, and National Endowment of the Arts (NEA). Awards include the Wexner Center Residency Award in Media Arts (2003–2004, which was extended to 2006), National Alliance for Media Arts and Culture Merit Award, Grande video Kunst Award, and the Los Angeles Film Critics Circle Award. Their videos are distributed by Video Data Bank at the

School of the Art Institute of Chicago The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) is a Private university, private art school associated with the Art Institute of Chicago (AIC) in Chicago, Illinois. Tracing its history to an art students' cooperative founded in 1866, which gr ...

Publications

References

External links

*
Sadie Benning
in the Video Data Bank.
Senses of Cinema: Great Directors Critical DatabaseSadie Benning by Lia Gangitano
''

Bomb A bomb is an explosive weapon that uses the exothermic reaction of an explosive material to provide an extremely sudden and violent release of energy. Detonations inflict damage principally through ground- and atmosphere-transmitted mechan ...

'' {{DEFAULTSORT:Benning, Sadie 1973 births Living people American experimental filmmakers American multimedia artists American video artists 21st-century American women sculptors 21st-century American sculptors American women painters American women photographers American women experimental filmmakers American women academics American LGBTQ sculptors American LGBTQ painters American LGBTQ photographers American feminist musicians American LGBTQ film directors Artists from Milwaukee Filmmakers from Milwaukee LGBTQ people from Wisconsin Bard College alumni Le Tigre members Bard College faculty Lesbian sculptors Lesbian painters Lesbian photographers Lesbian feminists Non-binary photographers Non-binary painters Non-binary sculptors Transgender painters Transgender photographers Transgender sculptors American lesbian artists Non-binary lesbians