CLAUDIA HART

ARTIST

A CHILD’S MACHIAVELLI by Claudia Hart was initially written and illustrated by the artist in 1995, inspired by Niccolò Machiavelli’s Renaissance treatise, THE PRINCE, the first book of political philosophy. Hart’s version began as a series of oil paintings and a small catalog, produced by the Realismus Studio, at the Neue Gesellschaft für Bildende Kunst, Berlin in 1995.
The catalog was eventually released as an expanded hardcover by Penguin USA in 1998, along with German and French editions.
While keeping to the meaning of the original, Hart rewrote THE PRINCE, reflecting street values and the voice of youth culture, as if Machiavelli’s book, meant to advise kings on seizing power, was a primer to teach good manners to small children.
In 2019, Beatrice Books, a small experimental publisher, reissued A CHILD’S MACHIAVELLI as a more contemporary book. At that time, Hart discovered among her files a series of Flash animations created for an ebook, the early 21st-century digital format that had long since disappeared, initiated by the production company Flicker Labs in 2010.
In 2022, at the height of the crypto bubble, she realized her old Flash animations could now be opened, so she transformed her technological castaways into NFTs. The animations were narrated by Hart using vocal recordings made in 2010, including sound effects and background music. With that last transformation, she ultimately produced animations that are brutal but true insights, standing as reminders that while technologies may come and go, human frailties remain the same.
<meta charset="utf-8">"We are obviously in a period of cultural crisis, with the world slipping into autocracies, war in Ukraine, and democracy dramatically destabilising in the USA. Social media is used to spread misinformation and engender fear and terror in order to manipulate the populace. The little mottos that I wrote in the early nineties are more relevant now than ever. They seem to be pointedly directed at the cultural and political world of today. Yet when I wrote them, I felt that I was translating Machiavelli’s early 16th-century text into the politics of that time."
– Claudia Hart, June 2023

CLAUDIA HART | A CHILD'S MACHIAVELLI | NFTS

EXPANDED.ART is delighted to present the solo exhibition MY TRAVELS IN HYPERREALITY by Claudia Hart in collaboration with Annka Kultys Gallery on view in London and online. Curated by Annka Kultys and Anika Meier, the exhibition showcases seven video projects that span two decades of the artist’s creative output. 
The seven videos on view showcase Hart's extensive digital art practice, highlighting her prolific use of simulation technologies such as augmented reality, animation, and printed sculptures. Her work delves into philosophical themes, exploring time, history, and human desire. Created between 1998 and 2019, these artworks provide an intimate glimpse into Hart's personal voice. 
Hart's artworks are showcased and collected by institutions such as the Whitney Museum of American Art, Museum of Modern Art, National Gallery, Hamburger Bahnhof, Albertina Museum, The Carl &amp; Marilynn Thoma Foundation Collection, the Spalter Digital Art Collection, and The New York Public Library. She has exhibited at the New Museum, created projects at the Eyebeam Center for Art + Technology, and is currently a fellow at the Center for New Music and Audio Technology, UC California, Berkeley.

CLAUDIA HART | MY TRAVELS IN HYPERREALITY

VOICE GEMS x Claudia Hart

Claudia Hart is one of the most well-known female pioneers of digital art, with a career that began in the early 1990s. Starting by defining all that photography was not, the New York-based artist reimagined image-making in the early days of virtual reality. She pioneered what are now ubiquitous technologies: 3D rendering, printed sculptures, and virtual and augmented realities.

Hart’s influence on contemporary digital art is substantial. Her work is in prestigious collections and exhibitions such as, among others, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the THOMA Foundation, and is the cover image of Christiane Paul’s fourth edition of DIGITAL ART, published in May 2023. The book is considered to be the canon of digital art history.

DIGITAL ART HISTORY AND POST-PHOTOGRAPHY

CLAUDIA HART: "I AM NOT A FUTURIST", CONVERSATION WITH ANIKA MEIER PART I

Claudia Hart wrote her way into visual art. Leveraging her positions at ID and later at ARTFORUM, Hart took the opportunity to explore the obscure corners of design and contemporary art and became obsessed. Her obsession led to her curating an exhibition in 1984 about art and design crossover, an impulse that then swept the art scene. It was called HOUSE ON THE BORDERLINE, and was staged at White Columns, New York's oldest alternative non-profit space. The artists, curators, and writers she met—from the gallerist Holly Solomon to artists Dan Graham and Ericka Beckman—guided her. Hart's explorations led her to rediscover herself as an artist using multiple mediums, from the decorative arts to painting and animation. 

In the mid-1990s, Hart saw the movie TOY STORY at the Berlin Film Festival. It inspired her to animate A CHILD’S MACHIAVELLI (Penguin Edition, 1996), her most well-known illustrated book. This piece has lasting relevance. First because of its profound human theme—political strategy and the will to power—but also because the artist translated her version of Niccolò Machiavelli's Renaissance treatise THE PRINCE from one new technology into the next over the course of thirty years. 


CULTURE WARS AND ANIMATIONS

CLAUDIA HART: MIND AND BODY, CONVERSATION WITH ANIKA MEIER PART II

With a background in architecture and writing, Claudia Hart came into the spotlight in the 1990s as a multimedia artist  interested in investigating themes of representation and identity. Hart integrates subjects from art history, philosophy, and cultural studies to examine themes of feminism, embodiment, and temporality through symbolic poetics that embroider onto real-world politics. She does this by drawing on computing, virtual imaging, and 3D animation technologies. No matter the medium, Hart has made a name for herself by creating uncanny, mesmerising images.

In the third and final of three conversations with Anika Meier for EXPANDED.ART, Hart speaks about her journey from painting to animation, virtual reality, and NFTs; her background in architecture and its influence on her practise of creating uncanny images; and how Hart, as an artist of our time, sees the present.

UNCANNY IMAGES AND SIMULATIONS

CLAUDIA HART: ON VISION AND THE VISIONARY, CONVERSATION WITH ANIKA MEIER PART III

MAGAZINE

The exhibition explores how female artists at the forefront of digital art approach the male-dominated field in a variety of mediums such as AI, AR, video, poetry, and sculpture.

FEMALE PIONEERS OF DIGITAL ART

A BEATING HEART | SHOWROOM

The exhibition showcases seven video projects that span two decades of the Claudia Hart’s creative output. In collaboration with Annka Kultys Gallery in London.


MY TRAVELS IN HYPERREALITY 

CLAUDIA HART | LONDON

A CHILD’S MACHIAVELLI was initially written and illustrated by Claudia Hart in 1995. It was inspired by Niccolo Machiavelli’s Renaissance treatise, THE PRINCE, the first book of political philosophy.

A CHILD'S MACHIAVELLI 

CLAUDIA HART | GALLERY

VOICES OF WEB3 is an archive of voices and statements summing up the year 2023 in digital art and culture. It is a document in time on the blockchain bringing together some of the leading voices shaping Web3 and the history of digital art.

THE ARCHIVE 2023

VOICES OF WEB3 | GALLERY

TECHNO TERRAIN: NATURE IN THE AGE OF THE METAVERSE explores the dynamic relationship between nature and the digital realm. The exhibition takes visitors on a journey through a mesmerizing fusion of AI-driven digital art, nostalgia-infused landscapes, and the limitless possibilities of the metaverse.



NATURE IN THE AGE OF THE METAVERSE 

TECHNO TERRAIN | SHOWROOM

EXHIBITION

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Claudia Hart

A Digital Death (Short and Sweet)

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EXHIBITION