Leslie Thornton

The seminal and enigmatic media artist Leslie Thornton straddles the media and art worlds and is known for addressing a range of charged subjects. Her work ventures into the highly imaginative and quasi-fantastic, and is often arranged in serial or episode format, incorporating distinctly post-modern combinations of archival and original footage, moving and still images. Thornton’s early experiments in film, video, and installation helped blaze a trail for video artists, along with Chris Marker, Chantal Akerman and others. She has received many awards, including the Maya Deren Award, the first Alpert Award in the Arts for media, a nomination for the Hugo Boss Award and two Rockefeller Fellowships; she was a 2013 Guggenheim Fellow. Her work has been shown around the world in such venues as dOCUMENTA, MoMA PS1, Centre Pompidou, Tate Modern and the Serpentine Gallery in London, and at the New York and Rotterdam Film Festivals, among others.