Lynn Hershman Leeson: Are Our Eyes Targets? / Digital Diaries

Lynn Hershman Leeson: Are Our Eyes Targets
April 11, 2024–February 2, 2025, JSF Düsseldorf

The Julia Stoschek Foundation is excited to present Lynn Hershman Leeson: Are Our Eyes Targets?, the first solo exhibition by the renowned artist and media pioneer in Düsseldorf. Spanning the entire second floor of the foundation, the exhibition features videos, photo-collages, and interactive and mixed-media installations that delve into the artist’s groundbreaking practice.

2024 marks the fortieth anniversary of the epic video installation, The Electronic Diaries of Lynn Hershman Leeson 1984–2019 (1984–2019), which forms the centerpiece of the exhibition. Hershman Leeson examines her personal experiences of abuse and illness and the relationship between technology and self, amid the global political context. As the work shifts between time frames and perspectives, viewers encounter the evolution of multiple, sometimes contradictory personas that represent the artist. These slipping identities lead us to question how much of what we see on our screens is true, revealing a gap between reality and our mediated images of it. Set against the contemporary media landscape, Hershman Leeson’s work rings truer than ever. More here.

The exhibition Lynn Hershman Leeson: Are Our Eyes Targets? is curated by Lisa Long, Artistic Director of the Julia Stoschek Foundation, with the support of Line Ajan, Assistant Curator.

Digital Diaries
April 11, 2024–February 2, 2025, JSF Düsseldorf

Artists: Alex Ayed, Sophie Calle, Sophie Gogl, Rindon Johnson, Kristin Lucas, Sarah Lucas, Jota Mombaça, Hannah Perry, Frances Stark, Martine Syms, Wolfgang Tillmans, Tromarama, Hannah Wilke.

The group exhibition Digital Diaries looks at how artists have experimented with diaristic forms in video and digital art from the 1970s to today. Inspired by Lynn Hershman Leeson’s iconic work The Electronic Diaries of Lynn Hershman Leeson 1984–2019 (1984–2019), Digital Diaries gathers videos, photographs, video sculptures and mixed-media works that record artists’ intimate experiences. Placing works from the collection in dialogue with loaned pieces, the exhibition combines early videos by Sophie Calle and Hannah Wilke with contemporary works by Alex Ayed, Jota Mombaça, Hannah Perry, and Tromarama, among others. 

Intertwining images and personal writing, these artists use storytelling and digital technologies to craft images of themselves and reveal their private lives. From self-portraiture and home videos to phone messages and chatroom conversations, the works move from the intimacy of daily life, as in a photograph by Wolfgang Tillmans and a video by Ken Okiishi, to a wider sociopolitical view, like in Rindon Johnson’s video. Drawing on the evolution of film, video, and photography, as well as on our communication tools, the artists reflect on the impact technologies have had on the construction and performance of gender and identity. More here.

Curated by Line Ajan.

About the Julia Stoschek Foundation
The Julia Stoschek Foundation is a non-profit organization dedicated to the public presentation, advancement, conservation, and scholarship of time-based art. With public exhibition spaces located in Berlin and Düsseldorf that feature cutting-edge media and performance practices, the foundation stewards one of the world’s most comprehensive private collections of time-based art.

With over 900 artworks by 300 artists from around the globe, the Julia Stoschek Collection spans video, film, single- and multi-channel moving image installation, multimedia environments, performance, sound, and virtual reality. Photography, sculpture, and painting supplement its time-based emphasis. The collection’s contemporary focus is rooted in artists’ moving image experiments from the 1960s and ’70s.

Press contact: press@jsfoundation.art.