Hermine Freed

Hermine Freed was born in 1940 in New York, where she died in 1998. Freed originally studied painting at Cornell University and New York University, where she taught in the late 1960s, but was primarily active as a filmmaker. In 1972, she moved to the School of Visual Arts in New York, where she held a teaching position in video art beginning in 1974. In 1973 Freed participated in the video festivals Circuit at the Everson Museum of Art, New York, and Trigon in Graz, Austria, and in 1975 in Projects: Video VI at MoMA, Projections at the Whitney Museum, USA, and Video Art at the Serpentine Gallery in London, UK. The artist was represented at the 10th São Paulo Biennial in 1973 and Documenta 6 in 1977.

Her documentaries deal with female perception and female self-understanding. In early videos such as Two Faces (1973), Freed explored the relationship between what is directly perceived and the recognition of experiences already made. She worked with techniques such as blueboxing, image overlays, and electronic color changes, as well as mirrors, optical devices, lenses, and magnifying glasses. Through changes and changing tasks, the artist offered new possibilities of seeing, which she simultaneously questioned.

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