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Michelle Handelman: Hustlers & Empires | November 7
Graduate Lecture Series co-presentation with SFMOMA
 

Michelle Handelman’s phantasmagoric video installations create hypnotic and complex spaces of ever-shifting queer identities. Blurring the line between performance and reality, she re-contextualizing historical figures in cinema and literature by casting subcultural icons who play versions of themselves within a cinematic framework. Exploring philosophical questions of existence, she confronts the things we collectively fear and deny—sexuality, death, chaos. Handelman will introduce her project Hustlers & Empires, a SFMOMA co-commission and her project Irma Vep, The Last Breath (2013/15) starring Zackary Drucker and Flawless Sabrina.

Michelle Handelman is a Guggenheim Fellow who has exhibited at Broad Art Museum; MIT List Visual Arts Center; Participant, Inc, NYC; PERFORMA Biennial; The Henry Art Gallery; Guangzhou 53 Art Museum; and REDCAT. During the 1990s, Handelman was based in SF where she collaborated with Monte Cazazza, a pioneer of the Industrial music scene; directed the feature doc BloodSisters (1996), and performed in several films by Lynn Hershman-Leeson. Her work is in many collections including Kadist Art Foundation; di Rosa Foundation and Preserve; Zabludowicz Art Trust. She’s an Associate Professor in the Film, Media and Performing Arts department at Fashion Institute of Technology, NYC.

michellehandelman.com