Сэди Беннинг: Художник, исследующий идентичность и границы медиа

American visual artist

Sadie T. Benning (born April 11, 1973) is an American artist, who has worked primarily in video, painting, drawing, sculpture, photography and sound. Benning creates experimental films and explores a variety of themes including surveillance, gender, ambiguity, transgression, play, intimacy, and identity. They became a known artist as a teenager, with their short films made with a PixelVision camera that have been described as "video diaries". Benning was a co founder and a former member of the American electronic rock band Le Tigre, from 1998 until 2001.

Sadie Benning was born April 11, 1973, in Madison, Wisconsin. Benning was raised by their mother in inner city Milwaukee. Their parents divorced before they were born, their father is film director James Benning. Benning left high school at age 16 due to homophobia.

Benning began creating visual works at age 15, they started filming with the "toy" video camera they received as a Christmas gift from their father, the experimental filmmaker James Benning. Benning used a Fisher Price PXL 2000 camera, also known as PixelVision, which created pixelated black and white video on standard audio cassette tapes. Benning's earlier videos – A New Year, Living Inside, Me and Rubyfruit, Jollies, and If Every Girl Had a Diary used Benning's isolated surroundings and the effect this had on Benning as a focus for their theme. In Benning's earliest work, A New Year, Benning shied away from being in front of the camera, instead focusing on their surroundings – primarily the confines of their room and bedroom window – to portray their feelings of angst, confusion and alienation. "I don't talk, I'm not physically in it, it's all handwritten text, music; I wanted to substitute objects, things that were around me, to illustrate the events. I used objects in the closest proximity – the television, toys, my dog, whatever." The themes of sexual identity and the challenges of growing up are repeated throughout the body of Benning's work, who self identified as a lesbian in 2014. Benning uses pop culture, such as music, television or newspapers, to amplify their message while simultaneously parodying the same pop culture. Benning also draws inspiration from images on television or in movies, observing: "They're totally fake and constructed to entertain and oppress at the same time – they're meaningless to women, and not just to gay women. I got started partly because I needed different images and I never wanted to wait for someone to do it for me". As their work has progressed, Benning has increasingly used images of their own body and voice.

Benning entered Bard College in 2013 and graduated two years later with a MFA degree, where they now work as faculty. Their work is in various public museum collections including the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), among others.

In 1998, Benning co founded Le Tigre, the feminist post punk band whose members include ex Bikini Kill singer/guitarist Kathleen Hanna and zinester Johanna Fateman. Benning left the band in 2001 and JD Samson joined Le Tigre after Benning's departure.

YearExhibition nameLocationNotes1990Artists' Television Access, San Francisco, California1991Film in the CitiesSt. Paul, Minnesota1991Randolph Street Gallery, Chicago, Illinois20087th Gwangju BiennaleGwangju, South Jeolla province, South Korea2012VHS the ExhibitionFranklin Street Works, Stamford, Connecticut2012Raw/Cooked: Ulrike MüllerBrooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, New York2013–20142013 Carnegie InternationalPittsburgh, Pennsylvania 2016Off Site Exhibition: A Shape That Stands UpHammer Museum, Los Angeles, California2017Shared EyeKunsthalle Basel, Basel, Switzerland1989Me & Rubyfruitblack & white video, Pixelvision5:31This piece is included in the art collection at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Museum of Modern Art.1989Living Insideblack & white video, Pixelvision5:06This piece is included in the art collection at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Museum of Modern Art.1990Welcome to Normalcolor video, Hi 820:001990Jolliesblack & white video, Pixelvision11:18This piece is included in the art collection at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Museum of Modern Art. This piece is in the art collection at the Museum of Modern Art.2006Play Pausetwo channel video installation from hard drive, color digital video/ drawings on paper29:21Directed by Sadie Benning in collaboration with Solveig Nelson, drawings and sound by Sadie Benning. Influenced by the book, Ulysses by James Joyce. This piece is included in the art collection at the Whitney Museum of American Art. +Music work by BenningYearNameTypeNotes1999Le Tigrecompact disc and vinylMusic album recorded with Kathleen Hanna and Johanna Fateman.