CCCA Canadian Art Database

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Lisa Steele

Lisa Steele is a Canadian artist, a pioneer in video art, educator, curator and co-founder of Vtape in Toronto. Born in the United States, Steele moved to Canada in 1968 and is now a Canadian citizen. She has collaborated exclusively with her partner Kim Tomczak since the early 1980s. Steele has shown internationally at the Venice Biennale (1980), the Kunsthalle Basel, the Museum of Modern Art (NYC), the National Gallery of Canada, the Institute of Contemporary Art (Boston), 49th Parallel Videoseries, the Vancouver Art Gallery and the Long Beach Museum. She is a founding director of Vtape in Toronto, a national information and distribution service for independent video and a founding publisher and editor of FUSE Magazine. Her videos are in collections worldwide, including The National Gallery of Canada, the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Museum of Contemporary Art (Houston, Texas), Ingrid Oppenheim, Concordia University (Montreal), Newcastle Polytechnic (England), Paulo Cardazzo (Milan), the Canadian Embassy (Tokyo) and the Akademie der Kunst (Berlin).
Creator Id: 574
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
Country of Birth: USA
Province of Birth: Missouri
Year of Birth: 1947
City: Toronto
Country: Canada
Type of Creator: Artist, Curator
Gender: Female
Mediums: curation, media, video
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Work by Lisa Steele

A Very Personal Story

Work ID: 53710

Description: "When I was 15, I came home from school to find my mother dead. This tape describes the day of her death. Until I did this tape, I had never completely recounted this experience. The tape is an attempt to remember as accurately as possible one day in my life - to let memory become the present tense." L.S.

Measurements: 17 minutes

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Birthday Suit with scars and defects

Work ID: 53709

Description: "On the occasion of my 27th birthday I decided to do a tape that chronicled my passage through time. I have always been clumsy, tripping, dropping, falling with alarming regularity. This tape accepts the extent of the consequences." L.S.

Measurements: 12 minutes

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Some Call It Bad Luck

Work ID: 53711

Description: "I produced this tape to examine the process of interrogation. I used the format of a "cop show" but removed all the action; the people just talk. The story is simple enough: Donna (the main character) works in a laboratory as a technician. One night when she's working late, an armed man enters and holds her hostage. Before morning, the police have intervened, the man is dead, and Donna herself is under suspicion. These events all occur before the tape opens. The subject of this tape is based on my own observations of how legal and law enforcement agencies interact with women. This is not so much a story of corruption within the police force as it is an examination of how order and authority reproduce themselves, developing an account of reality, one that differs greatly from the lives of the powerless people that these 'official conclusions' supposedly describe." L.S.

Measurements: 47 minutes

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