Suzanne Lacy (American b. 1945)

Suzanne Lacy is a visual artist whose prolific career includes performances, video and photographic installation, critical writing and public practices in communities. She is best known as one of the Los Angeles performance artists who began active in the Seventies and shaped and emergent art of social engagement. Her work ranges from intimate, graphic body explorations to large-scale public performances involving literally hundreds of performers and thousands of audience members. Her work has been reviewed in The Village Voice, Artforum, L.A. Times, the New York Times, Art in America, and in numerous books and periodicals. She lectures widely, has published over 70 texts of critical commentary, and has exhibited in The Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, The New Museum and P.S. 1 in New York, and The Bilbao Museum in Spain. Her scores of fellowships include the Guggenheim Foundation, The Henry Moore Foundation, and The National Endowment for the Arts. Her book, Mapping the Terrain: New Genre Public Art (1995), now in its third printing and available in both English and Chinese languages, was responsible for coining the term and articulating the practice. Leaving Art: Performances, Politics and Publics, the collected essays of Suzanne Lacy, was published in 2010 by Duke University Press; a monograph “Suzanne Lacy: Space Between”, by Sharon Irish, was published in 2010 by University of Minnesota Press. Lacy is founding chair of the MFA in Public Practice at the Otis College of Art and Design.

For more information, please visit www.suzannelacy.com