Exploring the tension between human expression and technology…

Addie Wagenknecht is a renowned American conceptual artist who works in the fields of emerging media, open-source culture, pop culture, and hacker culture, exploring the tension between human expression and technology. Using Melvin Kranzberg’s first law of technology as a reference, which states: “Technology is neither good nor bad; nor is it neutral,” Wagenknecht toys with the idea that technology can be all those things. In her work, which combines digital technology with painting, sculpture, photography, and installation, she deals with the concepts of privacy, freedom, surveillance, consumption, and feminism in our digitally dominant society. Much of Wagenknecht’s work focuses on hacker and open-source cultures, exploring how hacking methodologies can be applied to systems and networks outside of technology, especially motherhood, consumerism, and communities.

Addie Wagenknecht holds a Bachelor of Science in Multimedia and Computer Science from the University of Oregon and a Masters degree from the Interactive Telecommunications Program at New York University. She has received fellowships and residencies from Eyebeam Art + Technology Center in New York City, Culture Lab UK, The Mozilla Foundation, Institute HyperWerk for Postindustrial Design Basel (Switzerland), and The Frank-Ratchye STUDIO for Creative Inquiry at Carnegie Mellon University.

Wagenknecht’s art has been exhibited worldwide in famous galleries and museums, including MuseumsQuartier Wien, Vienna, Austria; La Gaîté Lyrique, Paris, France; The Istanbul Modern, Istanbul, Turkey; Whitechapel Gallery, London, UK, and MU Hybrid Art House, Eindhoven, Netherlands. Her work has been featured in numerous books and magazines, such as TIME, The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Art in America, and Vanity Fair. In 2016 she collaborated with Chanel and I-D magazine as part of their Sixth Sense series, and in 2017 her work was acquired by the Whitney Museum for American Art. Wagenknecht is a member and founder of several collectives, including NORTD Labs, F.A.T. Lab, and Deep Lab.

She lives and works between U.S. and Austria.