Biography
- Born in Dallas Texas on October 29, 1974.
- BS from New York University 1997.
- Hit by an NYC Taxi, 2001.
- MFA Parsons School of Design 2004.
Elizabeth Hendler lives and works in New York City.
Hendler's work has always addressed issues of psychology, portraiture and the body. After the life-altering experience of being in a severe taxi accident in 2001, she focused on corporal and medical themes. Hendler, after her accident, underwent eight surgeries to repair and reconstruct her leg, rebuild her arm's nervous system, repair her supra-neurosensitivity, and gain the ability to walk and move again. In a wheelchair for years off and on, and for a short while, completely helpless and unable to move, Hendler had the kind of experiences that many will not experience until old age. These seminal experiences, the loss of control of her own body, the incorporation of foreign titanium hardware, outside cadavers elements, transplantation of nerves into her body transformed her work significantly.
Prior to 2001, Elize had worked mostly figuratively, in portratiture, drawing and painting. The art after 2001 is about the fragility and loss of control of the body, and she made many works about her own experience as she went through it. Her work is poignant, raw and intense. During this time, Hendler worked with x-rays, light boxes, radiographic imaging, antique medical illustrations, photography and performances, Hendler had her 6th and 7th surgeries over the summer of 2003, and documented much of her experience which she examined in her MFA Thesis Show at Parsons.
Hendler's post-MFA body of work looked to the language of film, fashion and "b" horror films to create images of sex and violence and disaster. By co-opting the visual language of film and fashion, she strove to create new perspectives out of known entities. The perception of the characters in narratives evokes feelings of nostalgia, pain - both psychic and corporeal, and beauty and sensuality, and a campy sexy quality. Her images allude to action outside the camera's frame, ambiguous moments of sex, violence, and horror.
Hendler's most recent works have returned to many similar corporal themese from the time of her thesis, but now they have been given the added elements of adornment, body decoration, as well as some continued medical theme. always seen through gentle visual handmade works, or the sensual lens of a fashion oriented photographer, the subjects are lush and sensual in her lens.
Hendler works conceptually in video, photo, installation, drawing, painting and multi-media. Her work asks important questions of transformation, healing, trauma, medicine, artifice, the power of perception and the mind, beauty, sexuality, fate, and the body.