About the Book

In Private I, Lynn Hershman Leeson—one of the most influential conceptual artists of our time—shares her personal journey and the struggle for her visionary work to be recognized as art. In the 1970s, women artists were often dismissed unless linked to more successful male counterparts. Defying this marginalization, Hershman Leeson carved her own path, creating groundbreaking conceptual works such as her Roberta Breitmore series, the Video Diaries, and films starring Tilda Swinton, including Conceiving Ada and Teknolust. Her innovative installations took place in unconventional venues—hotels, department store windows, San Quentin State Prison, and housing projects—while she raised her daughter and endured long periods of poverty.

To support fellow artists, she launched The Floating Museum, bringing site-specific art to reclaimed public spaces. She was also one of the first to document women artists’ lives and work in her acclaimed documentary !W.A.R. (Women, Art, Revolution). Private I traces her lifelong commitment to experimentation—embracing film, video, AI, chatbots, touch screens, even her own DNA—to challenge ideas of identity and warn of the perils of technology and surveillance. At its core, Private I is a moving portrait of resilience, artistic innovation, and personal transformation through friendship, family, and fearless creativity.

Praise for Lynn Hershman Leeson:

“Lynn Hershman Leeson’s universe is the super-radical and unstoppably empowered kindergarten of all our wildest dreams: where no limit exists to our optimism and curiosity, where even our intellects can bask in glee and play.”

—Tilda Swinton

“I see in Lynn’s work: revolution in action, revolution in a frame, revolution at the speed of light as it tries to capture light. Lynn’s intelligence: lightning in a bottle with the cap almost coming off always because her energy is too great to contain, and no one medium can contain it, let alone one persona. So much to learn, to think about and observe.” 

—Hilton Als

“Lynn Hershman Leeson has always been ahead of the pack in her fusion of art and science. As early as the 1960s she foresaw the technology-permeated world of today. She was making computer-based work in the 1970s, and went on to experiment with artificial intelligence and virtual reality as art media. At a time when so much new art feels so old, this work feels like the future, which is now.”

—Holland Cotter, The New York Times

“In our current age of digital avatars, technological surveillance, and turbulent identity politics, few artists seem as relevant—and arguably as oracular—as Lynn Hershman Leeson.”

—Robert Slifkin, The Art Review

 “Spanning half a century, the pioneering art of America’s Lynn Hershman Leeson is strange, beautiful and, best of all, funny.”
—Laura Cumming, The Guardian

 “Lynn Hershman Leeson was the originator of our current artistic zeitgeist, and the first to explore many of the groundbreaking ideas that shape our current reality. I’m grateful to Lynn for showing me what it means to subvert the mainstream and create on my own terms. Lynn was there, let the people know!!” 

—Martine Syms

“Lynn Hershman Leeson is one of the most influential media artists of our times.”

—Rudolf Frieling, Curator of Media Arts at SFMOMA

“It is fair to make the claim that Hershman Leeson was several decades ahead of her time, for she saw the potential of media to subvert itself.”

—Lisa Long, Artistic Director of the Julia Stoschek Foundation

“As one of the first few practitioners to work creatively with emerging technologies, such as social media, artificial intelligence, and genetic modification, Hershman Leeson has continued to create ambitious thought-provoking work, blurring the boundaries between art, science, and technology. Her practice deals with many urgent issues—issues that remain as relevant today as they did fifty years ago—the biological and superficial manifestations of identity; the evolution of art, technology and its impact on the human body; privacy, surveillance, and censorship; and more recently, biotechnologies and genetic engineering.”

—Olivia O’Hearne

“Hershman Leeson began working with concepts around cyborgs as early as 1962 (we could say planting a fertile seed for Donna Haraway’s 1975 essay ‘A Cyborg Manifesto.’ She coined the term ‘anti-body’ to refer to her research and work on virtual identity in cyberspace. She saw her ‘anti-body’ (or alter-ego) as a viral presence that manifests itself in artificial intelligence fictitious forms, such as the online personas Agent Ruby and DiNA, roaming of the Internet and morphing to survive. As she explains: anti-bodies identify, expose and transform toxins in culture.” 

—Clot Magazine

About the Author