Andrea Fraser

Andrea Fraser is an artist currently based in Los Angeles, California, where she is a professor at UCLA in the department of art. She also serves as visiting faculty for the Whitney Independent Study Program in New York. Fraser has used performance, video, and a range of other media to explore the motivations that drive artists, collectors, art dealers, corporate sponsors, museum trustees, and museum visitors from the pursuit of prestige to that of financial investment, to sexual fantasy and self-realization. Working since the mid-1980s, Fraser has built on the site-specific and research-based approaches that emerged with conceptualism, combining them with feminist investigations of subjectivity and desire. Her methods are rooted in the psychoanalytic principle that one can only engage structures and relationships through the immediacy of performance. In addition, Fraser also writes about her observations and experiences in art and life. Moved by a personal and immediate engagement with Fred Sandback’s work at Dia: Beacon in 2004, she wrote the essay, “Why does Fred Sandback’s Work Make Me Cry.” For Tuesday Evenings, Fraser presents and discusses this moving essay that explores the psychological and emotional aspects of our relationship with art and museums.