Linda Dement


Linda Dement is an Australian multidisciplinary artist, working in the fields of digital arts, photography, film, and writing non-fiction. Dement is largely known for her exploration of the creative possibilities of emergent technologies such as the CD-ROM, 3-D modelling, interactive software, and early computing.

About

She began exhibiting in 1984. She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts from City Art Institute, Sydney in 1988.
Dement's work has been exhibited in Australia and internationally in galleries and festivals, including at the Institute of Contemporary Art in London, Ars Electronica in Austria, the International Symposia of Electronic Art in Sydney and Montreal and the Impakt Media Arts Festival in Europe.
Along with Australian artist collective VNS Matrix, Dement's work pioneered Australian cyberfeminism in art. Cyberfeminist politics and poetics used technology to deconstruct gender stereotypes in mainstream culture, and proactively situated women in relation to the rise of electronic culture in the early 1990s. Through her work, Dement aims to "give form to the unbearable." Dement's work has been described as depersonalised autobiography, that is, an appropriation of the digital as a space of expression, or a "rupture" in the info-tech dominated sphere of computer culture. Her work explores the relationship between the physical body and the body politic, exaggerating female "other-ness" or the "monstrous-feminine."

Censorship

Some of Dement's early works have come under censorship by the Australian Government. Typhoid Mary was taken to the NSW Parliament as being "obscene" and subsequently came under the classification of the Australian Government's Office of Film and Literature as "not suitable for those under the age of 18." In My Gash also received a formal "Restricted" classification.

Works

Writing