Martha Wilson

American performance and visual artist, photographer, and educator (b. 18 December 1947, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania); based in Brooklyn, New York City. Martha Wilson is a Founding Director Emerita of Pratt Institute's Franklin Furnace Archive (since 1976) and a co-founder of an iconic feminist group Disband (active 1978–82; reunited in 2008). Wilson is a renowned feminist artist and groundbreaking self-portraitist, creating innovative images and experimental video works that explore "female subjectivity" through role-playing, costumes, and "invading" other people's personas. She has been represented by NYC's P·P·O·W Gallery since May 2011 and has artworks in public collections at MoMA, Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY, the Whitney Museum Of American Art, and Moderna Museet, among others. Martha Wilson lectured extensively in Canada and the United States, most recently at Pratt. Among her various accolades are two National Endowment For The Arts grants (1978 and 83) and New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship (2001). Martha grew up in Newtown, Pennsylvania, and graduated "cum laude" from Wilmington College in Ohio in 1969. She then traveled to Canada, attending Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia and receiving her Master's in English Literature in 1971. The following year, Martha Wilson became an Adjunct Lecturer at Nova Scotia College Of Arts And Design (NSCAD) in Halifax, one of the epicenters of Canadian's "conceptual art" scene. Martha taught at NSCAD for two years but felt excluded and discriminated against as a woman and a young artist. In 1974, she returned to the USA, settling in New York City, where she finally began to gain critical attention for her innovative photography, filmmaking, and provocative performances. She also worked as the Adjunct Lecturer in XX-century Art at Brooklyn College's New School of Liberal Arts (75–76). In 1976, Wilson founded the Franklin Furnace Archive, Inc — an artistic residence and "virtual institution" at Pratt Institute devoted to intermedia and crossdisciplinary arts; this critically-acclaimed and prolific organization has been operating for almost 50 years. In 1978, Martha co-founded an all-female "a capella" experimental group Disband (6), with [a1397876], Donna Henes, Ingrid Sischy and Diane Torr. The collective insisted they weren't musicians but spoken word/noise performers, occasionally singing at Franklin Furnace storefront and local New York venues. Martha Wilson continued teaching at various art institutions, including the School of Visual Arts, NYC, the New School For Social Research, Baruch College, and Tisch School Of The Arts. Her professional archives are held by New York University's Fales Library & Special Collections.