Eleanor Antin

Biography

Eleanor Antin, who has worked in film, video, photography, installation, writing and performance since the 1960s, uses fictional characters, autobiography and narrative to invent histories and explore what she calls, "the slippery nature of the self." In her performance-based video works, Antin uses role-playing and artifice as conceptual devices, adopting archetypal personae — a ballerina, a king, a nurse — in her theatrical dramatizations of identity and representation.

Antin was born in New York City in 1935. She studied art at The High School of Music & Art in New York, and received a B. A. in creative writing and art at City College of New York in 1958. Her work has been exhibited in s...