X-Ray Man

For six decades now, the American artist Lynn Hershman Leeson has been dealing with the latest technologies. In her works, she investigates the effects that digital surveillance, artificial intelligence, and DNA programming, for example, have on society and our bodies. Her early collages and drawings testify to a great interest in the interaction of body and machine. “X-Ray Woman” reveals the interiorof a body in which gears and construction drawings alternate with joints, and devices areinterchangeable with organs. The title refers to the technology of X-rays, which can make visible whatis hidden inside the body. The same is true of the work “X-Ray Man”: the smoking person with an appliquéd plastic prosthesis, a visor, and a sprayed-on outline of an orange heart was created just a few years after the first heart transplant took place (and failed) in the United States.

Have you ever thought about what it would be like to be powered by gears, floppy disks, and memory disks instead of organs and hormones?
US artist Lynn Hershman Leeson has been occupied with the latest technologies for 60 years now. In her works, she investigates the effects that digital surveillance, artificial intelligence or DNA programming have on us humans and our bodies. Even her early collages and drawings show her special interest in the interaction of body and machine. “X-Ray Woman” lets you look inside the body: gears alternate with construction drawings with joints as well as devices with organs. Its title refers to X-ray technology, which can make visible what is hidden in the body. The same is true of the work “X-Ray Man” in this room: the smoking figure wears a built-in plastic prosthesis and a visor. The spray-painted orange heart outline was created just a few years after the first heart transplant took place in the USA.