Margia Kramer

Overview

Margia Kramer is an American documentary visual artist, writer and activist living in New York. In the 1970s and 1980s, Kramer recontextualized primary texts in a series of pioneering, interdisciplinary multi-media installations, videotapes, self-published books, and writings that focused on feminist, civil rights, civil liberties, censorship, and surveillance issues. Her works have been widely exhibited, including over 15 one-person shows, and over 40 group exhibitions at (1979); the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London (1980); the Museum of Modern Art (1981); the Whitney Museum of American Art (1984); Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE, 1987); the Rotunda Gallery in Brooklyn, NY (1988); the List Visual Arts Center of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1989); San Francisco Artspace (1989); P.S. 1 (1992); The Institute for Contemporary Art (1993); the Dia Art Foundation (1993); the American Film Institute Video Festivals; and at museums, galleries, and alternative spaces in the U.S. and abroad. Kramer's videos and installation pieces are in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, Allen Memorial Art Museum, New York Public Library, and in the private collection of Albert and Vera List, among other private and public collections.

In the 1970’s and 1980’s, using the United States' Freedom of Information Act (1967), Kramer sourced and requested, from the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), specific documents and dossiers. Kramer presented these original FBI and CIA documents to the public in her art works, exactly as they were released to her with redactions, unchanged in text and format. To underscore the inherent repressiveness of the official government documents’ deletions and redactions, Kramer’s creative process included enlarging or reducing their scale, shifting their positive/negative ratios (documents were made into negatives and enlarged), and changing the materials upon which they were printed. Kramer transformed the hieratic, primary materials into installations of giant negative photostats on transparent film that were hung from ceilings to cast shadows on surrounding walls. The large scale, hanging black rectangles and trenchant white to black positive/negative forms where redactions and texts became transparent, combined to create a chilling but compelling atmosphere that was simultaneously oppressive and informative.

By making art that highlighted the specific contents of the documents she received, Kramer was able to demonstrate their undercover strategies, as well as their negative emotional and material impact on the lives of United States citizens protected by the United States Constitution’s Bill of Rights. These works centered on issues around feminism, censorship, civil liberties, and civil rights, all in the context of surveillance art. In particular, Kramer made a series of videos, documentary books, and installations on subjects of state counterintelligence programs ("cointelpro") including the actress Jean Seberg, and the artist, filmmaker, and impresario/provocateur Andy Warhol.

Affiliations

Kramer was among the founding members (along with Lucy Lippard) of Political Art Documentation/Distribution (PAD/D, 1980–88), and was a member of the editorial board of its magazine, Upfront, to which she contributed two articles. PAD/D’s archive is now housed in the library of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.

Education

Selected works

Videography

Writings

PUBLICATIONS

ORIGINAL WRITINGS

Selected Exhibitions

ONE-PERSON EXHIBITIONS:

GROUP EXHIBITIONS:

Awards