Andrea Geyer

Geyer travels the American Southwest with her camera between the years of 1850 and 2007, and through her diary entries noted the lens through which western historiography was understood by conveying them through photographs of the landscape.

This project focuses on one of the longest struggles for social justice in North America; such as the dispossession of lands from Native Americans and their struggle for their rights and the return of their land.

↵In the first chapter it consists of 19 frames, each combining two or three black and white photographs with a text.

By exploring the network of 850 women during the modernist movement in 1920 to 1930s in New York City, Insistence captured the social links between these influential women.

This was a large undertaking with a big support team, with the backing of the Museum of Modern Art Archives.

Geyer sought to draw awareness to the vast linkage of influential women whose intended and unintended work created a network that ultimately aided each other's efforts towards social change.

Criminal Case 40/61 is a multimedia installation that was staged at the University of California.

It consisted of six channel video installation with six monitors and six stools in High definition video, colour and sound.

The duration of the display lasted 42 minutes.

It documented an abstract historical trial scene, using the six video projects, one for each; accused, defence, judge, Prosecution, Reporter and Audience.

The video narrated Adolf Eichmann's role in the Holocaust.

The soundtrack is projected in English and translated into German, Hebrew and Portuguese on headphones for the audience.

The six characters were embodied by the same actor name Wu Tsang.

This form of performance raised questions regarding the responsibility, truth, justice and the notion of evil and how these themes extend both forward and background in time through the modes of fictionalization.

It was an effort to propose terms and strategies with an individual rethinking about the past and present time and have possibility to exceed a mere-restaging.

Spiral Lands was an exhibition that was held in Argos Center for Art and Media in Belgium.

There is three parts to this showcase, documented as chapter one, two and three.

It raised a central issue that addresses the relation of identity and land in North America.

Emphasis was given to the three women who founded the MoMa in 1929; Abby Aldrich, Lilli P. Bliss, and Mary Quinn Sullivan.

Geyer believes the blueprint for effecting social change can be found through the examination of women's work in history.

Her second piece, Insistence, features a 15:21 min video shot overhead of black and white photographs with interjections of colour reproduction of the same heroic women stacked on top of a table.

This piece visualized the experiences the women in the postcards and their unheard voices as heroes.

Andrea Geyer (born 1971 in Freiburg, West Germany) is a German and American multi-disciplinary artist who lives and works in New York City.

With a particular focus on those who identify or at some point were identified as women, her works use photography, performance, video, drawing and painting to activate the lingering potential of specific events, sites, or biographies.

Geyer focus on the themes of gender, class, national identity and how they are constantly negotiated and reinterpreted against a frequent backdrop of cultural meanings and memories.

Geyer has exhibited at institutions such as the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), MOMA, and The Whitney Museum.

She has worked with numerous artists such as Wu Tsang, Simon J. Ortiz and Sharon Hayes (artist)

In 1991, Geyer attended basic study painting at the Independent Art Academy in Stuttgart, Germany.

After a year, she pursued studies in photography/film design at Fachhochschule Bielefeld.

In 1998 Geyer obtained a diploma in Fine Arts at Academy of Fine Arts in Braunschweig, Germany.

She studied at the Whitney Independent Study Program in New York City and graduated in 2000.

Geyer has been an assistant professor of Fine Arts at the Parsons School of Design since 2009.

Geyer's recent work at SFMOMA is about the legacy of Grace Morley, SFMOMA's founding director.

The exhibition is called "To Those Who Have Eyes to See".

The related performance is called "Traced: Grace McCann Morley’s Museum".

Revolt and Insistence is a two-part mural project that consisted of a video projection.

The first part is a moral drawing in graphite drawing (50 x 85 inch).

This is her product of Grey's research on cross-cultural, cross-class and cross-generational history.

It highlighted the role various women, through their relationships and organization, had on effecting social, cultural and political change.

The objective was to draw awareness to the quiet, uncredited women in the industries of labour organization, social entrepreneurs and cultural revolutionaries that were unrecognized for their achievements in positive social change.