Look for the plus icon next to videos throughout the site to add them here. Christine Turner — What challenges did you face as an artist early on in your career? Lynn Hershman Leeson — The early challenge was getting somebody to show my work, because nobody would. In order to do art criticism, I created three different fictional critics and they each had different names. So that was how I got my early start. I took a night class at UCLA where it was explained how you cast wax.
Also around that time, I got pregnant. In the fifth month of my pregnancy, I was having trouble breathing. The doctors found out that I had something called cardiomyopathy, a disease, and either one became better after eight months or one died. So much depended on the breath itself. I was under an oxygen tent in a hospital during my pregnancy.
I was unable to walk or do anything for many, many months. I added that sound component to the wax sculptures because, to me, it was like a drawing. It was sound that extended into space. After the breath itself, I added interaction and dialogue, so that became part of the work. I made my electronic diaries that way because I had nobody else around.
It was the same with the wax cast. Nobody was there, so I cast myself and made the wax cast from myself, and was able to do everything on my own. When you are experiencing the threat of death, you become so aware of time. It made me value what you do with time, and that making things that had resonance and importance were vital to completing your life.
I was a single mother for a few years. I tried selling sheets in a bath shop. I tried doing all kinds of other things. But the thing that I did like breathing was making art. I thought they were wrong. They were, and time bore that out. The works were a new language that nobody knew at the time.
