signs and symbols

michelle handelman uses video, text and performance to make hypnotic moving image installations that push against the boundaries of gender, race and sexuality, investigating philosophical questions of existence about the things we collectively fear and deny: sex, death, chaos.

Handelman is a 2019 Creative Capital Awardee and the recipient of a 2011 Guggenheim Fellowship. Her work has been shown widely in such venues as San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Pompidou Centre, Paris; ICA, London; Eli & Edythe Broad Art Museum, East Lansing; PERFORMA, New York; 53 Art Museum, Guangzhou; PARTICIPANT, INC, New York; Lincoln Center, New York; REDCAT, Los Angeles; The Henry Art Gallery, Seattle; The Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Ridgefield; and Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, Wisconsin. Recent shows include Hustlers & Empires, a commission with SFMOMA (2018); Irma Vep, The Last Breath, featuring Zackary Drucker (TRANSPARENT) and Flawless Sabrina (THE QUEEN); Marking Time: 50 Years of Video Art, curated by Michael Rush, Eli & Edythe Broad Art Museum (2015); and Irreverent, curated by Jennifer Tyburzcy, Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art, New York (2015). Her work Beware The Lily Law, a moving image installation on transgender inmates, has been on permanent display at the Eastern State Penitentiary, Philadelphia since 2011 and was featured in the exhibition Walls Turned Sideways: Artists Confront the American Justice System, curated by Risa Puleo, Contemporary Arts Museum Houston (2019).

In 2019-2022, Handelman's groundbreaking documentary BLOODSISTERS: LEATHER, DYKES AND SADOMASOCHISM (1995), which takes an in-depth look at the San Francisco leatherdyke scene during the mid-90s, celebrated its 25th anniversary with an international screening tour. Festivals and screenings included Tom of Finland Foundation, Los Angeles; Stonewall National Museum & Archives, Fort Lauderdale; NewFest Film Festival, New York; Nitehawk Cinema, Brooklyn; USC School of Cinematic Arts, Los Angeles; Outfest LGBTQ Festival, Los Angeles; qFLIX, Philadelphia; Brisbane Queer Film Festival at the Institute of Modern Art; Hamburg International Queer Film Festival; GAZE: International LGBTQ+ Film Festival, Dublin; MIX Copenhagen; Fringe! Queer Film & Arts Fest, London; Cinema Queer, Stockholm; Malmö Queer Film Festival: WorldPride Edition; Lesbian Quarter Festival, Ljubljana; and many others.