Barbara Hammer

Barbara Hammer was born in Hollywood in 1939. Her documentaries and experimental films are among the earliest and most comprehensive depictions of lesbian identity, love, and sexuality. For more than five decades, Hammer was an increasingly influential voice of queer feminism, and a chronicler of women’s self-empowerment in the U.S. and many other places around the world. Following film retrospectives at New York’s MoMA in 2010, Tate Modern, London in 2012, the art world began to take an interest in Hammer’s now historic body of work, which includes performances, installations, and works on paper. Numerous institutional exhibitions and successes followed, and today Hammer is considered one of the greatest examples of politically engaged feminist art. Hammer was a teacher for many years and held a professorship at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee (CH). She passed away in 2019.

Education

1996 – 1997

Post Masters Multi-Media Digital Studies | American Film Institute, Los Angeles, California (USA)

1675

M.A. Film | San Francisco State University, California (USA)

1963

M.A. English Literature | San Francisco State University, California (USA)

1961

B.A. Psychology | University of Los Angeles, California (USA)

Retrospectives

2020

La Virreina Centre de la Imatge, Barcelona (ESP)

2019

Werner Center for the Arts at Ohio State University, (USA)

Color Me Barbara, NewsFest, New York City (USA)

Museum of the Moving Image, New York City (USA)

2018

Austrian Film Museum, Vienna (AUT)

2017

Leslie Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art, New York City (USA)

2015

National Gallery of Art, Washington DC (USA)

2013

Kunsthal Oslo (NOR)

Toronto International Film Festival, Toronto (CAN)

2012

Jeu de Pome, Paris (FRA)

Tate Modern, London (GBR)

2010

Museum of Modern Art, New York City (USA)

2009

XII Muestra Internacional de Cine Realizado por Mujeres, Zaragosa (ESP)

2008

Universidad Complutense, Madrid (ESP)

2007

Chinese Culture University, Taipeh (TWN)

2006

Turin International Gay&Lesbian Film festival, Turin (ITA)

2005

Mar del Plata International Film Festival, Mar del Plata (ARG)

2004

Irish Film Center, Dublin (IRL)

2003

Australia Center for Movie Image, Melbourne (AUS)

2002

Seoul Art Cinema (KOR)

Women Make Waves Film/Video Festival, Taipeh (TWN)

2000

Women Make Waves Film/Video Festival, Taipeh (TWN)

1998

Immaginaria, 6th Women’s Film Festival, Bologna (ITA)

1997

yyz Gallery, Toronto, Ontario (CAN)

1994

Out in South Africa Film Festival, Johannesburg/Capetown (ZAF)

1993

Film Forum, Directors Guild of America, Los Angeles (USA)

1992

Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery, University of Nebraska, Lincoln (USA)

1991

Retrospective: Film Forum, Directors Guild of America, Los Angeles (USA)

1986

Panorama, The Berlin International Film Festival, Berlin (GER)

1985

Musée National d’Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris (FRA)

Enquiry