About Suzanne Lacy
Los Angeles-based artist Suzanne Lacy is internationally renowned as a pioneer in the field of socially engaged and public art. Lacy’s installations, videos, and performances deal with such critical issues as sexual violence, rural and urban poverty, incarceration, gender identity, labor, and aging. Working collaboratively, and as the model of a community organizer, Lacy has realized large-scale projects in London, Oakland, Los Angeles, Charleston, SC, and the Kentucky Mountains. She has won fellowships from numerous foundations, including the National Endowment for the Arts and Rockefeller Foundation, and her work has been exhibited and collected by national and international institutions.
Between the Door and the Street builds on Suzanne Lacy’s rich body of work devoted to issues of feminism. Examples of this include The Oakland Projects, performed in Oakland, California, between 1991 and 2000; The Tattooed Skeleton, at the Reina Sofia Museum, Madrid, in 2010; Silver Action, presented at Tate Modern, London, earlier this year; and Cleaning Conditions, part of the Do It exhibition at the Manchester Art Gallery, in England, in summer 2013.
Lacy is also known for her writing. In 2010, Duke University Press published a collection of her essays, titled Leaving Art: Writings on Performance, Politics, and Publics, 1974–2007. She also edited the influential book Mapping the Terrain: New Genre Public Art, published in 1995 by Bay Press. Lacy has held various influential positions throughout her career, including co-founder of the Women’s Building in Los Angeles, one of the first women-owned community centers, and co-founder of the Visual and Public Art Institute at California State University at Monterey Bay. She is currently the founding Chair of MFA in Public Practice at Otis College of Art and Design, in Los Angeles.
