Michelle Handelman is an American artist, filmmaker, photographer, and educator. Her video installations and live performances explore philosophical questions of existence and the subconscious topics usually forbidden and denied, such as sexuality, death, and chaos.
Background
Michelle Handelman was born on August, 1960, in Chicago, Illinois, United States. She is a daughter of Mitchell S. Handelman, and Claire Y. Holland (maiden name Youngren).
Handelman was associated with art while her father was related to the counterculture sex industry.
Education
Michelle Handelman studied at Hampshire College from 1978 to 1980. This year, she entered the School of The Art Institute of Chicago and spent three years there. Then, Handelman pursued her education at San Francisco Art Institute in Chicago where she received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1989.
She earned a Master of Fine Arts from Bard College in 2000.
Career
The start of Michelle Handelman’s professional career can be counted from the middle of the 1990s. During the decade, she tried herself both as an artist and educator of art. So, in 1995 she served as a visiting artist at the University of California, Davis. The following year, she joined the professor’s staff of the San Francisco Art Institute, and after a year at the institution, she became a professor at the California College of the Arts. It was this time when she created her feature documentary BloodSisters which was diffused by the Tribeca Film Institute's Reframe Collection.
Before moving to New York City in 1999, Handelman has collaborated with Monte Cazazza. Together, they produced such works as videos ‘Catscan’, the episode of ‘The Torture Series’ titled ‘Hope’, and the essay ‘The Cereal Box Conspiracy Against the Developing Mind’ featured in Apocalypse Culture 2, by Feral House Press. Another co-partner of Michelle Handelman while in San Francisco was Eric Werner with whom she worked on the performance of pieces by Lynn Hersman-Leeson and on Jon Moritsugu’s production ‘Terminal USA’. The artist’s personal project of the period was the Cannibal Garden series of videos.
At the beginning of the 2000s, Michelle Handelman continued the production of her phantasmagoric video installations, including ‘CandyLand’, ‘History of Pain, A’, and 2009 ‘Dorian, a cinematic perfume’ inspired by Oscar Wilde's ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’. The project was demonstrated at Participant, Inc., New York City, MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, Arthouse at the Jones Center, Austin, Guangzhou 53 Art Museum, China, Dirty Looks Screening Series, and Vox Populi Gallery, Philadelphia. From 2007 to 2013, she taught at the Massachusetts College of Art.
The recent projects by the artist include the video ‘Irma Vep, the last breath’, ‘The Laughing Lounge (Performa 05)’, and ‘This Delicate Monster’.
Nowadays, Michelle Handelman lives in Brooklyn and serves as an associate professor at the Film and Media department of the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT).
Views
Quotations:
"My work can be best described by theorist Helene Cixous’ ideas of Visceral Feminism: aggressively traversing the corporeal landscape in its various forms of excess and undress, while simultaneously giving it up for the viewer in an overflow of visual and psychological sensations."
Membership
Michelle Handelman is a member of the American Film Institute and the Film Arts Foundation.