Nan Hoover, Artist in distribution, USA, 1931 - 2008
Nan Hoover (1931-2008) was born in New York, USA, and studied at the Corcoran Gallery School of Art in Washington. In 1969 she moved to the Netherlands and has since then participated in many exhibitions throughout Europe. Her career has involved teaching video at art schools including the Staatliche Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf. It was in 1973 that Hoover started experimenting with video, both functioning as an extension of her painting practice and as a documentary medium. The work remains centered around linear, real-time scenes that are left relatively unedited. By using her own body as the primary artistic device in the works she is authoring, Hoover challenges dominant Western codes of representation, in which women are always the object and never the subject of the gaze. The videos often explore a visual ambiguity between body and landscape or abstract and 'natural' forms, being pervaded by an internal rhythm or pulse created by subtle, ongoing movements of light and form. Through these techniques Hoover presses viewers to consider the physical and psychoanalytic conditions of visibility and to evaluate the question of how they are linked to the formation of the subject.
