Michelle Lisa Herman (CV)

Michelle Lisa Herman is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice spans theoretical and philosophical research, feminist and disability politics, comedy, and conceptualism. Herman’s work broadly traverses the margins between ability and what is beyond our reach: particularly the limits of connection and communication in the digital age. Through installations, sculptures, and video Herman investigates the ways in which we negotiate and push these boundaries every day.

Herman has shown nationally in both group and solo exhibitions at locations such as the Hillyer Art Space, Arlington Art Center, Visarts, the Washington Project for the Arts, the Corcoran, The Smithsonian Institution, and The Kennedy Center. Herman’s work has been written about and featured in Hyperallergic, New American Paintings, The Washington Post, NPR, and East City Arts.

Artist Statement

As humans, we are inherently limited, but we continually strive to run against these restrictions. My current work focuses on limitations of human ability and the ways in which we construct devices—often using technology or other proxies—to extend our limits: particularly the limits of perception, attention, connection, and categorization. Through installations, sculptures, and video, I explore how we negotiate and push these boundaries every day. 

One device we use to extend our limitations is language. Within this system of signification, there is an inherent “slipperiness” in which meaning becomes malleable. I am interested in the implications of this concept in relation to the production of our individual realities. I explore the indeterminacy of meaning by presenting incongruent juxtapositions of ideas and materials (found video clips and found objects, a Roomba and a blow-up doll, or spatial situations that implicate the viewer). In this way, the works can offer a multitude of perceptual possibilities that signify reality. I want viewers to find connections in my artwork to their own experiences, but at the same time destabilize their understanding of their own perceived reality: vacillating between a feeling of the unfamiliar and the recognizable. I believe it is here—when a person can consider new possibilities of being—that they are receptive to change.