Lydia SCHOUTEN (b. 1948, Leiden) studied at the Vrije Academie van Beeldende Kunsten (The Hague) from 1967 until 1971 and then continued her education at the Academy of Visual Arts (Rotterdam) at the sculpture department from 1971 until 1976. In the late 1970s she initially became known for her performances. She used her body as a vehicle for expressing her anger about expectations to which she, as a woman, had to live up to, and about ideals concerning love and relationships. Her performances - fifteen in total, between 1977 and 1980 - were interpreted as critically examining existing stereotypes about femininity, identity and gender relations.
Her frank use of the body challenged the existing standards of propriety. The biggest of taboos was broken through the fact that she expressed anger about her own feelings and position, moreover, by doing so in public and transgressing the boundaries between public and private. Her work revolves around themes of femininity, isolation and the interrelation between mass media, sex, and loneliness. Early performances include Sex Objekt (1979), Smile (1978) and Cage (1978). In the eighties Schouten started to use video as an autonomous medium, where she experimented with staged videos, in which, in different disguises, she played the leading role in adventure stories. By using the temptation techniques of the mass media she created a fantasy world as a way of escape from the real world. Having rid herself from anger and homely ‘old chains’, she explored heroic roles. The plots, décor and other attributes were inspired by the culture of cartoons, soap operas, B-films, thrillers and advertising.
Since 1988, she has combined (video)-installation art with visual and acoustic media, staged photography and mixed media drawings. In her mixed media drawings she likes to create a time zone where the past is rethought and the future imagined. In order to portray , to present time, she wants to reach into the different depths of history and combine these with the current time. It’s a place where narrative elements resonate on a timeline and together attempt an exchange.
An extended stay in New York from 1989 till 1990 at MoMA P.S.1 was followed by stints in Canada, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, and the Caribbean. She worked as a lecturer at universities in several countries and was coeditor of the magazine Modern Denken. In 2011, she was a guest lecturer in the Visual Arts Department at the New World School of the Arts in Miami.
Since 2016, her early performances on video became part of the Feministic Avantgarde of the Seventies exhibition, initiated by Gabrielle Schor, director of the Sammlung Verbund in Vienna, Austria and since then travelling along several museums in Europe and USA. Also her work was incorporated in the Women House exhibition, at Musée de la Monnaie de Paris and The National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington.
Schouten has participated in many international exhibitions including The luminous Image, Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam); Comic Iconoclasm (ICA, London; Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin; Circulo de Belles Artes, Madrid; Cornerhouse Gallery, Manchester); 25 Jahre Videoskulptur (Kölnischer Kunstverein and DuMont Kunsthalle, Cologne; Congresshalle, Berlin); Imago, 13 video-installations, (travelling from Amsterdam to Budapest, Barcelona, Bratislava, Sevilla, Oporto and Taiwan); Feministic AvantGarde from the Seventies (Photographers Gallery, London; MuMok, Vienna; ZKM, Karlsruhe; Stavanger Art Museum, Norway; The Brno House of Arts, Czech Republic; International Center of Photography, New York). Solo exhibitions include: Folkwang Museum (Essen); Galerie Philomene Magers (Bonn); Museum Arnhem (The Netherlands); MoMA P.S.1 (NY); Galerie Wanda Reiff (Maastricht); Julie Saul Gallery (NY); Southeast Museum of Photography (Daytona Beach); Provinciaal Museum (Hasselt); Ivan Dougherty Gallery (Sydney); Houston Center for Photography (Houston); Ludwig Museum (Budapest).
Lydia Schouten lives and works in Amsterdam (Netherlands).
Her frank use of the body challenged the existing standards of propriety. The biggest of taboos was broken through the fact that she expressed anger about her own feelings and position, moreover, by doing so in public and transgressing the boundaries between public and private. Her work revolves around themes of femininity, isolation and the interrelation between mass media, sex, and loneliness. Early performances include Sex Objekt (1979), Smile (1978) and Cage (1978). In the eighties Schouten started to use video as an autonomous medium, where she experimented with staged videos, in which, in different disguises, she played the leading role in adventure stories. By using the temptation techniques of the mass media she created a fantasy world as a way of escape from the real world. Having rid herself from anger and homely ‘old chains’, she explored heroic roles. The plots, décor and other attributes were inspired by the culture of cartoons, soap operas, B-films, thrillers and advertising.
Since 1988, she has combined (video)-installation art with visual and acoustic media, staged photography and mixed media drawings. In her mixed media drawings she likes to create a time zone where the past is rethought and the future imagined. In order to portray , to present time, she wants to reach into the different depths of history and combine these with the current time. It’s a place where narrative elements resonate on a timeline and together attempt an exchange.
An extended stay in New York from 1989 till 1990 at MoMA P.S.1 was followed by stints in Canada, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, and the Caribbean. She worked as a lecturer at universities in several countries and was coeditor of the magazine Modern Denken. In 2011, she was a guest lecturer in the Visual Arts Department at the New World School of the Arts in Miami.
Since 2016, her early performances on video became part of the Feministic Avantgarde of the Seventies exhibition, initiated by Gabrielle Schor, director of the Sammlung Verbund in Vienna, Austria and since then travelling along several museums in Europe and USA. Also her work was incorporated in the Women House exhibition, at Musée de la Monnaie de Paris and The National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington.
Schouten has participated in many international exhibitions including The luminous Image, Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam); Comic Iconoclasm (ICA, London; Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin; Circulo de Belles Artes, Madrid; Cornerhouse Gallery, Manchester); 25 Jahre Videoskulptur (Kölnischer Kunstverein and DuMont Kunsthalle, Cologne; Congresshalle, Berlin); Imago, 13 video-installations, (travelling from Amsterdam to Budapest, Barcelona, Bratislava, Sevilla, Oporto and Taiwan); Feministic AvantGarde from the Seventies (Photographers Gallery, London; MuMok, Vienna; ZKM, Karlsruhe; Stavanger Art Museum, Norway; The Brno House of Arts, Czech Republic; International Center of Photography, New York). Solo exhibitions include: Folkwang Museum (Essen); Galerie Philomene Magers (Bonn); Museum Arnhem (The Netherlands); MoMA P.S.1 (NY); Galerie Wanda Reiff (Maastricht); Julie Saul Gallery (NY); Southeast Museum of Photography (Daytona Beach); Provinciaal Museum (Hasselt); Ivan Dougherty Gallery (Sydney); Houston Center for Photography (Houston); Ludwig Museum (Budapest).
Lydia Schouten lives and works in Amsterdam (Netherlands).