Catherine Lord
Catherine Lord is Professor Emerita of Studio Art and affiliated faculty, Department of Women’s Studies and Department of Visual Culture at UC Irvine. An artist, writer, curator, and scholar, she is known for work that challenges conventional boundaries and elevates feminist, queer, colonial, and cultural narratives. Her practice often interweaves photography and text, creating evocative pieces that confront the anxieties surrounding homosexuality while championing lesbian visibility in contemporary art history.
Lord is the author of the text/image experimental narrative, The Summer of Her Baldness: A Cancer Improvisation (University of Texas Press), the conceptual translation Sa Calvitie, Son Colibri: Miss Translation (L’une Bevue) and (in collaboration with Richard Meyer), Art and Queer Culture, 1885-2005 (Phaidon Press, 2011), as well as essays and creative writing in numerous publications. Her curated exhibitions include “Pervert,” “Trash,” “Gender, fucked,” and “Memories of Overdevelopment: Philippine Diaspora in Contemporary Visual Art.” Lord’s work as a visual artist was included in the 1995 inaugural biennial of Site Santa Fe and has been shown at the New York Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, Post Gallery (Los Angeles), and La Mama (NYC), among other venues.
Lord earned her B.A. in English from Radcliffe College and an M.F.A. in Photography and History of Photography from SUNY Buffalo’s Visual Studies Workshop. She previously served as Dean of the School of Art at CalArts. Lord was named the Shirley Carter Burden Visiting Professor of Photography at Harvard in 2008 and was awarded the Harvard Arts Medal in 2010.