Barbara Hammer: Evidentiary Bodies

Barbara Hammer’s groundbreaking approach to experimental film has had a profound impact on the development and evolution of queer cinema over the past five decades. Working primarily with eight-millimeter, Super 8, and 16-millimeter film, she produced nearly 70 films, ranging from experimental shorts to essay and full-length documentaries that examined gender, sexuality, community, illness, and mortality. Evidentiary Bodies is Hammer's first and only multichannel video installation. The immersive work intertwines images from Hammer’s previous films with her own medical diagnostic imagery creating a powerful and moving representation of her life, work, and experience with cancer. "It has been my life’s work to break taboos and make the invisible visible…I want to show illness in a new way that doesn’t hide it." – Barbara Hammer

Image: Still from Barbara Hammer, Evidentiary Bodies, 2018, multimedia installation with three-channel HD video (color, sound, 9:30 minutes). All images courtesy of The Estate of Barbara Hammer, Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), and Company Gallery, New York.