Ann Hamilton

(b Lima, OH, 22 June 1956).

American installation artist, photographer and video artist. After obtaining a BFA in Textile Design at the University of Kansas in 1979, she studied sculpture at Yale University School of Art, New Haven, CT, graduating with an MFA in 1985. Between 1985 and 1991 she taught at the University of Santa Barbara, CA, moving to Columbus, OH, in 1992. During roughly the same period she produced a series of photographs, Untitled (Body Object Series) (1984-93; see 1996 exh. cat., p. 14), which showed Hamilton performing various poses such as Shoemouth (1984), where she has a shoe inserted into her mouth. These are studies for the later installations, with the body becoming part of an object, a mechanism. In the installation Privation and Excesses (1989; installed San Francisco, CA, Capp Street Projects), Hamilton used most of the $750,000 grant to lay a sea of pennies on a floor of honey. The installation also included a pen of goats and a seated attendant rubbing his or her hands over a hat full of honey. After the installation the pennies were washed and paid into an account to cover the exhibition's expenses. Hamilton's interest in human actions and their legibility forms the basis for her use of text in her work. In Tropos (perf. New York, DIA Cent. A., 1993) an attendant sat burning line after line of a book, gradually and laboriously rendering it illegible. In the 1990s Hamilton began to use light projection and video more predominantly in her work in pieces such as Salic, (1995; see 1997 exh. cat., p. 19), which shows a projection of her unfurling lines of text from her mouth. (Source: CATHERINE M. GRANT, "Ann Hamilton," The Grove Dictionary of Art Online, (Oxford University Press, Accessed July 7, 2004), )