Digital, Multimedia, and Sound

French, 20th – 21st century, female.

Active in France.

Born 11 August 1950, in New York.

Installation artist, photographer. Multimedia.

Art Narratif.

Aballéa studied epistemology. She lives and works in Paris. Aballéa's work stages natural phenomena and scientific descriptions entirely of her own invention, which she describes using writings in the form of tales. Her work generally involves an environment in which light has a predominant place: 'In my work, I like to tell stories. I tell them through space, image, situation and text. I don't believe in any defined limitation between the real and the unreal, but rather a large, fluctuating zone of possibilities. My works are situated in this large zone.' She willingly refers to Borgès and Lewis Carroll, provoking a mêlée between elements of reality and textual fiction. She often uses photographs re-touched with pastel colours which she accompanies with texts....

Yugoslav, 20th–21st century, female.

Active in the Netherlands.

Born 30 November 1946, in Belgrade (now in Serbia).

Performance artist. Multimedia.

Conceptual Art, Body Art.

Marina Abramović studied at the fine arts academy in Belgrade from 1965 to 1970 and began executing her first performance pieces, films, and videos between 1973 and 1976. She taught at the fine arts academy of Novi Sad from 1973 to 1975, the year she met Ulay in Amsterdam. They not only shared the same birth date but also the same artistic concerns. That meeting was described thus: ‘When we met for the first time in Amsterdam in 1975, we decided to meet up again on neutral territory, somewhere between Amsterdam and Belgrade. We chose Prague, which is exactly in the middle.’ From that time until the late 1980s, they lived and worked together. They describe their collaborative works as ‘relation-work’, a phrase that expresses their desire for total fusion....

American, 20th century, male.

Born 24 January 1940, in New York.

Painter, sculptor, performance artist, video artist. Multimedia.

Body Art, Conceptual Art.

Vito Acconci was born in the Bronx, New York and lives and works in Brooklyn. He studied at Holy Cross College in Worcester, Massachusetts and at the University of Iowa. He has taught in various art schools and universities and in particular at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Yale University and the Parsons School of Design in New York....

American, 20th – 21st century, male.

Born 1968, in Redondo Beach (California).

Installation artist, photographer, film maker. Multimedia.

Doug Aitken is a graduate of the Pasadena Art Center College of Design. He started as art director for Fatboy Slim, Iggy Pop and Barenaked Ladies' video clips. He operates from New York and Los Angeles. His installation ...

Mexican, 20th century, male.

Born 1936, in Mexico.

Artist. Multimedia.

Conceptual Art.

Alcaraz-Laus was noticed at the Biennale des Jeunes in Paris in 1971. Under the title Double 1, he presented an encounter between a dancer and that dancer's image, a conceptual production revolving around the theme of the body and its representation, one that was in favour at that time....

American, 20th – 21st century, male.

Born 1960, in Miami.

Digital artist. E-books, internet art, online performance.

Mark Amerika studied at the University of Florida, obtaining a BA degree in 1985, and a master's degree from Brown University in 1997. He has been Creative Writing Fellow and Lecturer in Network Publishing and Hypertext at Brown University, and is Professor of Digital Art at the University of Colorado in Boulder. He professes a number of influences including William Burroughs, Stanley Kubrick and Robert Rauschenberg. Amerika is regarded as a pioneer in the digital arts field....

American, 20th – 21st century, male.

Born 5 June 1947, in Chicago.

Installation artist, performance artist, photographer, musician.

Computer Art (Multimedia Art).

Laurie Anderson graduated in art history at Barnard College in 1969, and obtained a second degree of Fine Arts in sculpture from Columbia University in ...

American, 20th century, male.

Active from 1930 in the USA.

Born 1926, in Ayios Nikolaos (Crete), Greece; died 17 August 2013, in New York City.

Sculptor, draughtsman. Multimedia.

Stephen Antonakos immigrated to New York in 1930 and lived there the remainder of his life. He attended Brooklyn Community College and graduated in ...

Greek, 20th – 21st century, male.

Active in Germany.

Born 1954, in Athens.

Draughtsman, engraver, sculptor, video artist. Multimedia.

Michalis Arfaras first studied painting at the school of fine arts in Athens between 1972 and 1974. He continued his studies at the college of fine arts in Brunswick in Germany where he specialised in engraving and produced book illustrations and comic strips. He now lives and works in Hildesheim where he teaches graphic art at the university....

Thai, 20th–21st century, male.

Active in the United States since 2005.

Born 1986, in Bangkok.

Media and installation.

Born in Bangkok, Thailand, Korakrit Arunanondchai began a brief career in music before moving to the United States to attend the Rhode Island School of Design. After graduating in 2009, he continued his studies at Columbia University and earned his MFA in 2012. At Columbia, Arunanondchai studied under Rirkrit Tiravanija who was influential to the direction of his work, advising him to draw further on his Thai heritage. The same year, Arunanondchai graduated from the summer residency programme at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Arunanondchai now lives and works in New York and Bangkok.

Arunanondchai has enjoyed a rapid rise to success. After participating in numerous group exhibitions including at the Sculpture Center (New York, 2012) and Institute of Contemporary Art (London, 2014), he had solo exhibitions at spaces including MoMA PS1 (New York, ...

British, 20th–21st century, male.

Active in Berlin.

Born 1982, in Oxford, UK.

Filmmaker.

Ed Atkins was born to parents both active in creative fields; his father was a graphic designer and his mother taught art in public schools. He received his BA from Central Saint Martins and his MA from Slade School of Fine Art, both in London, England. Utilising an increasing nuanced and complex set of digital imagery techniques, Atkins’ films exist firmly in the realm of the uncanny. It is difficult to discern whether many of the images or characters are real or digital, and the convoluted narratives of Atkins’ animations lie between passive video and active videogames. Atkins’ works are created entirely on his computer, utilising cutting-age software.

Atkins does not physically appear in any of his films but utilises an illustrated avatar. The effect surpasses basic animation, but is also not entirely human; rather it is an unsettling version of himself transformed from reality via motion capture into computer-generated imagery. These characters frequently belch snippets of Atkins’ prose throughout the films, as well as songs and quotations derived from pop culture and literary sources. Written poetry and monologues accompany the animation. These audio elements are an important aspect of Atkins’ work, as the artist has expressed that his fundamental question making still concerns issues surrounding language. Atkins considers writing and literature his primary conceptual driver as opposed to drawing. Even though he has worked with film and cameras in the past, almost the entirety of his practice is now done via his laptop. Stock image sourcing, motion-capture, and writing are created in component parts, and then edited and blended together to create the finished film. Atkins' film ...

French, 20th century, male.

Born 1934, in Fontenay-aux-Roses.

Painter (mixed media), collage artist, sculptor, draughtsman. Multimedia.

After meeting Yves Klein in 1957, Bernard Aubertin produced his first red monochrome works. He varied his methods of applying the paint, using in turn a spatula, knives, forks and spoons. Out of this search for a different density of paint, he created an art which was constantly being renewed by the artist's actions and in the eye of the spectator. From ...

American, 20th – 21st century, female.

Born 20 November 1946, in Harrisburg (Pennsylvania).

Sculptor, draughtswoman, multimedia artist.

Land Art.

Alice Aycock studied at Rutgers University (Douglass College), New Brunswick, NJ, receiving a BA in 1968, when she moved to New York. She obtained an MA from Hunter College in ...

American, 20th – 21st century, female.

Installation artist, video artist, photographer, sculptor, film maker. Multimedia.

Beth B. attended art school as a child. She studied at University of California, Irvine, and at San Diego State University, and obtained a BFA from the School of Visual Arts, New York. She took her initial as a surname from 'B-Movies', the film company she founded in New York City in the late 1970s. Beth B. has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and from the New York State Council on the Arts. She is co-founder of the artists' group Collaborative Projects Inc. She lives in New York City....

Spanish, 20th – 21st century, male.

Born 1957, in Bilbao.

Sculptor, installation artist. Multimedia.

Txomin Badiola lives and works in Bilbao and spent eight years in New York during the 1990s. He produces large-scale pieces in steel with smooth flat geometric surfaces supported by feet and posts, giving them the appearance of constructions. Alongside his sculptures, he also creates installations that make use of other media, including video, photography and sound and that incorporate elements of popular culture, such as the cinema of Jean-Luc Godard, Fassbinder and Pasolini. His work has been shown in solo exhibitions, including: in ...

American, 20th–21st century, male.

Born 1967, in San Francisco.

Assemblage artist, installation artist, performance artist. Multimedia.

Identity Art.

Matthew Barney studied at Yale University, receiving a BA in 1989. His experiences in sport and modelling are reflected in his artistic work, particularly in videos of his performances requiring significant physical endurance and athleticism, such as ...

American, 20th – 21st century, female.

Active in New York and Berlin.

Born 1949, in Columbus (Ohio).

Installation artist, sculptor, mixed media, video artist. Multimedia.

Judith Barry studied finance, architecture and art at the University of Florida, graduating in 1972. She received an MA in Communication Arts from New York Institute of Technology in ...

American, 20th–21st century, male.

Born 1978, in Miami (Florida).

Painting, drawing, multi-media installation, sculpture.

Hernan Bas is a Florida-born Detroit-based artist whose aesthetic is rooted in the Romantic tradition of 19th-century writers. His works prominently feature young male figures in lonely landscapes or interior settings. Implications of gay culture, dandyism, and the paranormal are all embedded in Bas’ paintings, drawings, films, and sculptures. Melancholy and ennui seem to shadow Bas’ characters while their attitude, posture, and fashion combine his fascination with 19th-century dandyism and romantic nihilism.

Raised in parts of northern and southern Florida, Bas graduated in 1996 from the New World School of the Arts in Miami. The influence of his childhood surroundings can be seen in the rugged landscapes of earlier works such as Children of the Sunflower (2007). Seemingly lost in a sea of jagged sunflowers, two pensive adolescent boys stare into the distance. Unburdened by the silence that surrounds them, the two characters seem to be comfortable with their boredom....

French, 20th – 21st century, male.

Born 25 March 1952, in Tulle.

Installation artist. Multimedia.

Neo-Conceptual Art.

Bazile worked under the name of Bazilebustamente from 1983 to 1987. At an exhibition at the Musée National d'Art Moderne in Paris in 1982, he installed four signs visible both from the outside and the inside: a tobacconist's sign for smell, a restaurant sign for taste, a locksmith's sign to say, perhaps, that each individual possesses the key, and for sight, optician's spectacles. Bazile's work is subversive, denouncing the mannerisms and rules of the artistic world. He presents familiar objects and signals in order to enter into contact with a public dimension, but without always directly addressing the uninitiated. He took part in collective exhibitions under the name of Bazile: ...

French, 20th century, male.

Sculptors, installation artists. Multimedia.

This group takes its name from the surnames of Bernard Bazile and Jean-Marc Bustamante who signed their works in this way in 1982 at the Musée Cantini in Marseilles, at the Galerie Croussel-Hussenot in Paris in 1984...