JULIA SCHER Julia Scher, Wonderland, 2018 | Page 2

Julia Scher
Julia Scher was born in 1954 in Hollywood, California. The artist currently lives and works in Cologne.
Emerging in the mid 1980s as precise but playful analyst of social and technological changes, Julia Scher
has been dealing with video surveillance for more than 30 years. Her work addresses surveillance both as a
concrete phenomenon of control, including its apparatus and architecture, as well as its impact on private
and public sphere. Very early on, her performance and video installations drew attention to the effects of
increasingly ubiquitous cameras and monitors, anticipating our surveillance alienated society.
On occasion of the 1989 Whitney Biennial, Scher installed a female guard in hot pink uniform next to ticket
sellers in the lobby of the Whitney Museum of Art. Drawing on the juxtaposition of the color‘s playful and a
uniform’s menacing connotations, Scher combined the analysis of control mechanisms with feminist critique.
This strategic use of pink, her ostensibly insouciant use of the word “girl” (and “girl dog”), and emphasis on
humor is only the most manifest aspect of this feminist approach to drawing attention to the coded nature of
culture and subverting these codes.
Scher, who at some point trained as a video security expert, also drew on her experience of working at a gym,
where she had observed that a certain invisibility went along with menial jobs. In her subsequent practice
the artist has continued to play with this latent change of visibility and with the power exerted by certain
uniforms—a difference best represented by comparing police uniforms with those of janitors: one makes its
wearer visible, the other invisible. Appropriately enough, Scher’s signature cap draws on that of a crossing
guard, not the more authority-charged blue police cap she wears only once in a portrait.
Scher’s large-scale installations often include auditory components: emulating the familiar language of public
announcements, Scher’s sound works expose the inherent violence and power relations underlying the
innocuous-sounding language of such everyday communications in a witty, disconcerting manner.
Among her many institutional exhibitions are: Julia Scher – Delta, Neuer Aachener Kunstverein, Aachen
(2018); The Condition of Being Art: Pat Hearn Gallery and American Fine Arts, Co., The Hessel
Museum of Art, Annandale-on-Hudson (2018); Art and Entertainment, MAMCO, Geneva (2018); Art in
the Age of the Internet, 1989 to Today, Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston (2018); In Relation to a
Spectator, Kestnergesellschaft, Hannover (2017); Enemy of the stars: Ronald Jones in dialogue with
David Hammons, Louise Lawler, Helmar Lerski, and Julia Scher, KW Institute for Contemporary Art,
Berlin (2017); VIDEONALE.16, Kunstmuseum Bonn, Bonn (2017); Film as Place, SFMOMA, San Francisco
(2016); Global Control and Censorship, ZKM Zentrum für Kunst und Medien, Karlsruhe (2015); 1984–1999.
La Décennie, Centre Pompidou-Metz, Metz (2014); NYC 1993: Experimental Jet Set, Trash and no Star,
New Museum, New York (2013); Exposed: Voyeurism, Surveillance and the Camera Since 1870, Walker
Art Center, Minneapolis (2011), SFMOMA, San Francisco (2011) and Tate Modern, London (2010); Predictive
Engineering2, SFMOMA, San Francisco (1998); Forecast, Maurine and Robert Rothschild Gallery, Harvard
University, Cambridge (1996); The Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus (1995); Don’t Worry, Kölnischer
Kunstverein, Cologne (1994); Aperto ’93, 45th Venice Biennale (1993); Informationsdienst, Künstlerhaus,
Stuttgart (1992); The Speaker Project, ICA, London (1992); Buffalo Under Surveillance, Hallwalls
Contemporary Art Center, Buffalo (1992); Security Site Visits, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (1990); The
Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (1989); Occupational Placement (O.P.), The
Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus (1989); Julia Scher: Public Travel Area (P.T.A.), MoMA PS1, New
York (1988).
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