Carolee Schneemann Wins Coveted Venice Biennale Golden Lion

Carolee Schneemann

Carolee Schneemann has been announced as the winner of the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement of the 57th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia – VIVA ARTE VIVA. The American artist was recommended for the award by the curator of the 57th International Art Exhibition, Christine Macel. She will receive the accolade on May 13 at Ca’ Giustinian, the headquarters of La Biennale di Venezia, during the awards ceremony and inauguration of the 2017 exhibition.

Commenting on the award, Christine Macel stated that Schneemann has been one of the most important figures in the development of performance and Body Art “She has used her own body as the prevalent material of her art,” said Macel. “In so doing, she situates women as both the creator and an active part of the creation itself. In opposition to traditional representation of women merely as nude object, she has used the naked body as a primal, archaic force which could unify energies.”

Carolee Schneemann’s career spans more than 60 years during which she has worked in a wide range of mediums including in painting, photography, performance film, video, mixed media, and installations, but she is best known as a pioneer of feminist performance. Her most famous performance is “Interior Scroll” 1975 during which the artist, standing naked on a table, slowly pulled a narrow scroll of paper from her vagina while reading aloud from it.

According to Macel, Schneemann is an artist with a direct, sexual, liberating, and autobiographical style who champions the importance of women’s sensual pleasure and examines the possibilities of political and personal emancipation from predominant social and aesthetic conventions. “Through the exploration of a large range of media . . . Schneemann re-writes her personal history of art, refusing the idea of an “his-tory” narrated exclusively from the male point of view,” said Macel.