Artist Profile

Hito Steyerl

Portrait of Hito Steyerl

Hito Steyerl was born in 1966 in Munich. Steyerl studied at the Academy of Visual Arts, Tokyo and the University of Television and Film, Munich. She also completed a doctorate in philosophy at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna. She currently lives and works in Berlin.

 

Steyerl has held teaching positions at several institutions including KUVA Helsinki, as a visiting professor for Artistic Research Theory (2012–13); University of Arts Berlin, as a professor for Experimental film and video (since 2011); Royal Academy of Copenhagen, as a visiting professor at the School for Conceptual Art (2009–10); Goldsmiths College London, as a convener of MA’s in Cultural and Postcolonial Studies; and the University of Arts Berlin, as a visiting professor for Gender and Cultural Studies (2001-03).

 

From 2014 to 2017, Steyerl co-founded the Research Centre for Proxy Politics at the University of Arts Berlin. The initiative led a series of workshops and in 2017, it concluded with a final conference, The Proxy and Its Politics, and the publication of Proxy Politics. Power and Subversion in a Networked Age (Archive Books, Berlin).

 

In 2021, Steyerl received the Honorary B3 BEN Award in the category Art. Steyerl is the recipient of the 2019 Käthe Kollwitz Prize from Akademie der Künste in Berlin. In 2015, Steyerl was awarded the EYE Prize from the EYE Film Institute Netherlands and the Paddy & Joan Leigh Fermor Arts Fund. In 2010, she received the New:Vision Award from the Copenhagen International Documentary Festival.

 

The artist’s solo exhibitions include: Hito Steyerl – A Sea of Data, National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul (2022); Hito Steyerl: I Will Survive, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2022); Hito Steyerl. I Will Survive, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen K21, Düsseldorf, and Centre Pompidou, Paris (2020–21); Hito Steyerl, n.b.k. – Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, Berlin (2019–20); This is the Future, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto (2019–20); Hito Steyerl: Drill, Park Avenue Armory, New York (2019); Power Plants, Serpentine Galleries, London (2019); Käthe Kollwitz Prize 2019. Hito Steyerl, Akademie der Künste, Berlin (2019); The City of Broken Windows, Castello di Rivoli, Turin (2018); Liquidity Inc., The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston (2017); Factory of the Sun, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2016); The Distributed Image, LUMA Foundation, Arles (2016); Duty-Free Art, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid (2015); Liquidity Inc., Tensta Konsthall, Spånga (2015); Too Much World, Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane (2016); Hito Steyerl, Artists Space, New York (2015); Hito Steyerl, Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven (2014); Hito Steyerl, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London (2014); Circulacionismo, Museo Universitario de Arte Contemporaneo, Mexico City (2014); Hito Steyerl: Guards, Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego (2013); Focus: Hito Steyerl, Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago (2012); The Kiss, Overgaden Institute of Contemporary Art, Copenhagen (2012); Hito Steyerl, n.b.k. – Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, Berlin (2009); The 1st at Moderna: Hito Steyerl, Moderna Museet, Stockholm (2008), and Red Alert, Kunsthalle Winterhur, Winterhur (2008).

 

Selected group exhibitions and biennales with participation of the artist include: documenta fifteen (2022) (withdrawn); Double Vision, Tai Kwun Contemporary, Hong Kong (2022); Our Other Us, Art Encounters Biennial, Timișoara (2021); Work it Out, Kunsten Museum of Modern Art, Aalborg (2021); Daejeon Biennale 2020: A.I., Sunshine Misses Windows, The Daejeon Museum of Art, Daejeon (2020); Liquid Love, MoCA in collaboration with TheCube Project Space, Taipei (2020); … of bread, wine, cars, security and peace, Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna (2020); May You Live in Interesting Times, La Biennale di Venezia, Venice (2019); Resistance, CENTRALE for Contemporary Art, Brussels (2018); Martha Rosler & Hito Steyerl: War Games, Kunstmuseum, Basel (2018); Art in the Age of the Internet, 1989 to Today, The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston (2018); Skulptur Projekte 2017, Münster (2017); ARS17, Kiasma– The Museum of Contemporary Art Helsinki (2017); Like a Moth to a Flame, curated by Tom Eccles, Marl Rappolt and Liam Gillick, Fondazione Sandretto re Rebaudengo, Turin (2017); Gwangju Biennial, Gwangju (2016); Dreamlands: Immersive Cinema and Art, 1905-2016, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2016); São Paulo Biennial,São Paulo (2016); 9th Berlin Biennale, Berlin (2016); 56th Venice Biennale, German Pavilion, Venice (2015); Global Control and Censorship, Zentrum für Kunst and Medientechnologie Karlsruhe (2015); 4th Dojima River Biennale, Osaka (2015); Cut to Swipe, Museum of Modern Art, New York (2014), and Smart New World, Kunsthalle Düsseldorf (2014).

 

The artist’s work is held in numerous collections including the Centre national des arts plastiques, Paris; Contemporary Art Society, London; Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw; Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas; Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Marieluise Hessel Collection at CCS Bard, Annandale-on-Hudson; Hirshhorn Museum, Washington D.C.; Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; Kunstmuseum kloster unser lieben frauen, Magdeburg; Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Chicago; Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, St. Louis; Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, Montreal; Museum of Modern Art, New York; San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Tate, London; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid; Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.