Artist Talk: Sharon Lockhart

The Henry is excited to welcome Sharon Lockhart as a Gurvich Contemporary Art Project visiting artist. During her visit, Lockhart will engage with youth, artists, educators, and community members in a series of experimental gatherings to discuss her work and collectively generate new ideas around contemporary art practices. In this talk, Lockhart will share thoughts on her extensive practice and recent projects.

Through film, photography, and installation, American artist Sharon Lockhart works closely with communities around the world on projects that are both socially engaged and visually complex, unfolding over extended periods of time. Celebrated for her highly conceptual practice, Lockhart’s work incorporates extensive research, architecture and long-term connections with her subjects. Since 2009, Lockhart has worked with many different groups of young women throughout Poland, primarily in Rudzienko, where she has organized a variety of summer retreats for teenagers. Through exercises in movement, reenactment, dance, yoga, craft, cooking, writing, and performance, Lockhart encourages the girls she works with to bring forth their personal narratives. In 2017, Lockhart represented Poland at the 57th Venice Biennale with her multidisciplinary project, Little Review, organized with National Gallery of Art, Warsaw, Poland. Created with young women from the Youth Sociotherapy Center in Rudzienko, Lockhart’s project in Venice comprised translations, a film and a series of photographs, as well as educational workshops. Little Review draws its inspiration from the work of Janusz Korczak (1878/79–1942), the Polish-Jewish educator, orphanage-director, and children’s rights advocate. Similar to Korczak, Lockhart’s goal is to provide a forum for children’s voices, both past and present.

Sharon Lockhart was born in 1964 and currently works in Los Angeles. Lockhart’s work has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions at international institutions including the Museu Colecção Berardo, Lisbon, Portugal; Arts Club of Chicago; Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University; Wiener Secession, Austria; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University, Cambridge; Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam; Kunsthalle Zürich; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Wolfsburg Museum, Germany; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Her films have been included in the New York Film Festival, Vienna International Film Festival, Berlin Film Festival, and the Sundance Film Festival.