Hammer Museum

Fund: $40,000

The Hammer Museum will present the first in-depth presentation in Los Angeles of both the video and performance work of renowned artist Andrea Fraser. Since the 1980s, Fraser has created incisive performance and installation works that interrogate social structures with humor and pathos, aligning herself with the concerns of feminism and institutional critique. Fraser’s work explores the role of art in mediating between the individual and larger social structures. Organized by Chief Curator Connie Butler and opening in September 2018, the exhibition will feature a selection of works from the Hammer Contemporary Collection that were developed between 1989 and 2003, and will include a new performance in the museum’s Billy Wilder Theater. The performance draws inspiration from Fraser’s response to the 2016 presidential election. The performance related videos are a foundational part of her work and, like the new performance work, frequently explore the social positions and psychological states inhabited by individuals in the current sociopolitical climate. Andrea Fraser: Collected Interviews, 1990-2018, a publication co-edited by art historian Rhea Anastas and artist Alejandro Cesarco and published by A.R.T. Press, will be released concurrently with the exhibition. The publication presents the artist’s voice as mediated through interlocutors ranging from professional peers to popular media, and contextualizes Fraser’s practice in the artistic, institutional, and discursive fields in which she intervenes. The exhibition and publication offer an opportunity to make Fraser’s performance-based works and interviews spanning three decades newly accessible to a broad audience.