Victoria Vesna


Victoria Vesna is a professor and digital media artist. She is known for her feminist video, computer and internet art and has been active since the early 1980s. Along with collaborator Jim Gimzewski she is thought to have created one of the first interactive artworks related to nanotechnology and defines her art practice as experimental research.

Early life and education

Victoria Vesna was born in Washington D.C. on June 9, 1959. She graduated from the High School of Art & Design in New York City, NY in 1976. She received a Fine Arts Diploma from the University of Belgrade, Yugoslavia in 1984. In 2000, she completed her Ph.D. at the Centre for Advanced Studies in Interactive Arts, University of Wales with a thesis entitled "Networked Public Spaces: An Investigation into Virtual Embodiement" in 2000.

Career

Victoria Vesna was the chair of the Department of Design Media Arts at the UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture as well as director of UCLA's Art|Sci Center and the UC Digital Arts Research Network. She received the Oscar Signorini award for best net artwork in 1998 and the CINE Golden Eagle award for best scientific documentary in 1986.
Through creative research, she examines perception and identity shifts in connection with scientific innovation as well as examining bio and nanotechnology through art.
Exhibitions include Spaceship Earth at the Centre of Contemporary Art Znaki Czasu in Toruń and MORPHONANO at the Beall Center for Art and Technology, Irvine, California.
In Christopher Hanson's review of her book Database aesthetics: Art in the age of information overflow, he says that Vesna provides an engaging collection of essays about changing aesthetics in interactive art and its relationship to the database.

Personal life

Formerly married to Bogdan Maglich, Vesna has two children by that marriage, which ended in divorce.

Works

Solo exhibitions