Kathy Brew

PROVENANCE: Courtesy of the Artist

This photo of Kathy Acker (1947-1997), a singular figure in the late-20 th century who
moved between the avant-garde art and literary scenes, is part of a series of photos
taken in front of the San Francisco Art Institute in 1991 when we were friends both
working there. In her provocative, performative writing, she confronted many issues —
sex, patriarchy, the body, war, colonialism, and much more — that remain critically
relevant to this day. In the past couple of years, there have been two exhibitions in
Europe focused on Acker and the influence of her oeuvre that have featured this
photograph and several others. This framed photo was in the exhibition at the ICA in
London in 2019.

Kathy Brew is an award-winning filmmaker and artist/writer/curator/educator who spent 14 years in the Bay Area but returned to her hometown, NYC, in 1994. She currently teaches in the MFA Art Practice department at the School of Visual Arts and most recently served as Guest Curator in MoMA’s film department from 2016-2020.  Her documentary, DESIGN IS ONE, has been screened and broadcast internationally, and her very first video, MIXED MESSAGES, created while living in San Francisco, is available on Kanopy and was featured in the 2020 International Film Festival Rotterdam.
She was a Fulbright Scholar, based in Lima Peru (from April-July 2018) where she completed a 20-minute film, Following the Thread, about indigenous weaving communities in the Cusco region of Peru. This work was presented along with a portfolio of photographs from the same communities in a pop-up exhibition at Centro de la Imagen at the end of her Fulbright stay. Further distribution plans are forthcoming.

Her photos of Kathy Acker were recently featured in two European exhibitions: at the Badischer Kunstverein in Karlsruhe, Germany (2018-Atrtmap exhibition- Kathy Acker and the ICA in London (2019- ICA exhibition- Kathy Acker)