Suzy Lake facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Suzy Lake
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Suzy Lake outside the Galerie Donald Browne, Montreal, before her 2011 exhibition Reduced Performing
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| Born | June 24, 1947 Detroit,
United States |
| Education | Wayne State University, Concordia University |
| Known for | Photographer, conceptual artist |
Suzy Lake (born June 24, 1947) is an American-Canadian artist. She lives in Toronto, Canada. She is famous for her work as a photographer, a performance artist, and a video maker. Lake uses different types of art to explore ideas like who we are, what beauty means, how gender affects us, and how we change as we get older. She is seen as a very important feminist artist and a strong activist for social change.
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About Suzy Lake's Life
Suzy Lake was born on June 24, 1947, in Detroit, Michigan, in the United States. She started studying art at Wayne State University and Western Michigan University from 1965 to 1968. During these years, she became involved in important movements for peace and civil rights in the 1960s. She also saw big social changes happening in Detroit in 1967.
In 1968, Lake moved to Canada with her husband. They wanted to avoid the Vietnam War draft. They settled in Montreal, where they found another period of big social change called the Quiet Revolution.
Suzy Lake first started as a painter. But in Montreal, she began to try out photography. She often used herself as the model in her pictures. She earned a Master of Fine Arts degree from Concordia University in 1980.
Lake taught art at the University of Guelph from the 1980s until she retired in 2008. After retiring, she was given the special title of Professor Emerita.
How Suzy Lake Makes Art
Suzy Lake creates photo-based self-portraits, which are pictures of herself. She often uses different costumes, make-up, and props to create new characters or identities. These adopted characters show how photos can present different sides of a person.
Lake has twenty-five collections of her artwork. Each collection explores ideas about gender, identity, and beauty. She makes art to show how her actions connect to who she is, or to what people think she is. She uses her photographs, videos, and performances to make people think about social norms and rules.
Lake once said in an interview that she always uses herself in her art. She does this to understand the social rules that women face.
Suzy Lake uses her art to control how she is seen by others. Her early On Stage photos were inspired by her time in Detroit. In these, she photographed herself as a wife and mother. Later, she wanted to make art that challenged these roles. In Montreal, Lake noticed a clear difference in power between men and women. She said that women faced a "glass ceiling", which means an invisible barrier that stops them from moving up. This idea led to her Choreographed Puppet photos. More recently, Lake has shown a new idea of beauty by displaying her older body in her collection called "Beauty and the Aging Body."
Suzy Lake's Work and Projects
Lake lived in Montréal for about ten years. She taught at the Montreal Museum School from 1969 to 1978. She was also guided by the Minimalist artist, Guido Molinari. She was very active in the early conceptualist art scene there. In 1971, Lake helped start an artist-run gallery called Véhicule Art Inc. with twelve other artists.
During this time, Lake's work was influenced by artists who used cameras to show ideas, not just to record reality. This was also when Lake started to focus on the topic of identity. In her 1973 photo series called A One Hour (Zero) Conversation with Allan B., she is the main subject. The camera records her expressions during a real conversation with a friend. To make her expressions stand out, Lake used white face make-up. Then, she asked her friends and family to circle the photos that best showed her personality. Much of her work in the 1970s featured herself, including works like Choreographed Puppets from 1976–77.
Lake moved to Toronto in 1978. There, she became part of the growing community of contemporary photographers. From the mid-1980s until 1994, Lake stopped appearing as the subject in her own work. She focused more on using her camera for social activism. One important project from this time was a series of photos she made with the Teme-Augama Anishnabai Band of Bear Island in Temagami, Ontario. This work helped bring more public attention to their land claim.
Lake continues to create art about the female body, now focusing on how it changes with age. She shows her work all over the world.
Important Ideas in Lake's Art
In an interview, Lake talked about how the political events of the 1970s influenced her art. She said, "I know that I am a feminist, but I can see that my politics started with human rights issues, civil rights, the FLQ in Quebec, and race issues in the States."
In 2006, Roberta Smith from the New York Times newspaper compared Lake's work to that of Cindy Sherman. However, art critic Thomas Micchelli said that Lake actually influenced Sherman when they were in school. Both artists were working in the 1970s. In 1975, Sherman invited Lake to show her art in a Hallwalls exhibition in New York.
Suzy Lake's performances are often seen as being influenced by other important performance art movements of the time, like Fluxus happenings. As a strong anti-war activist, Lake supported artists like Hans Haacke. These artists were part of the Institutional Critique movement, which challenged cultural support for the Vietnam War. Lake's art became more clearly activist in the late 1980s. Many people believe this was due to her friendship with the Teme-Augama Anishnabai of Bear Island. She created a series of works for them in the early 1990s.
Lake was considered an early example of body art. This is because many of her performances involved her own body in a physical way. While living in Montreal, Lake worked with several famous theater and performance groups, including the Judson Dance Theater. Together, they created performances that explored how human bodies interact with objects in the world. Other works by Lake explore the connection between the body and power, often by showing acts of destruction.
Major Art Shows
Suzy Lake had a big exhibition of her work called Introducing Suzy Lake at the Art Gallery of Ontario in 2014–15. This show was put together by Georgiana Uhlyarik. In 2016, Lake received the Scotiabank Photography Award. This led to another major exhibition of her work, curated by Gaëlle Morel, at the Ryerson Image Center (RIC) in Toronto. This show was part of the 2017 Contact Photography Festival.
Awards and Honours
Suzy Lake is a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts. In 2016, she received the Governor General's Award in Visual and Media Arts. She also won the Scotiabank Photography Award in the same year.
Galleries That Show Her Work
Suzy Lake's art has been shown by several galleries over the years. These include Galerie Gilles Gheerbrant (1974–1977), Jared Sable Gallery (1976–1990), and Paul Petro Contemporary Art (1995–2012).
Currently, Lake is represented by Georgia Scherman Projects, Toronto (since 2012), Solway Jones Gallery, Los Angeles (since 2009), and Galerie Donald Browne, Montréal (since 2010).
See also
- "Suzy Lake: Interview With A Maker of Change" by Bill Clarke, March 5, 2013
Images for kids
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A robot drawing
