Jill Magid

American artist Jill Magid’s work is deeply ingrained in her lived experience, exploring and blurring the boundaries between art and life. Through her performance-based practice, she has initiated intimate relations with a number of organizations and structures of authority, exploring the emotional, philosophical and legal tensions between the individual and ‘protective’ institutions such as intelligence agencies or the police. To work alongside or within large organizations, Magid makes use of institutional quirks, systemic loopholes that allow her to make contact with people ‘on the inside’. It is also typical of her practice to follow the rules of engagement with an institution to the letter—sometimes to the point of absurdity.

With solo exhibitions at institutions around the world, including the Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo (Mexico City, 2017), the Whitney Museum of American Art (New York, 2010), the Tate Modern (London, 2009), and the Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam (2005), Magid has received numerous awards, notably the 2017 Calder Prize. An Associate of the Art, Design and the Public Domain program at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University, she is also an adjunct teacher at Cooper Union and the author of four novellas. Her first feature film, The Proposal, premiered at Tribeca Film Festival 2018 and received an Honorable Mention for Best Emerging Filmmaker at Hot Docs in Toronto. Jill Magid’s work is included in both private and public collections, and she is represented by LABOR (Mexico City) and Galerie Untilthen (Paris).