Suzy Lake

Suzy Lake began her art practice in 1968, after moving to Montreal from her birthplace, Detroit, following the social and political unrest of the 1960s. Lake was among the first female artists in Canada to adopt performance, video, and photography to explore the politics of gender, the body, and identity. In 1972 she formed Véhicule Art Inc. with twelve other artists to establish one of the first artist-run centres in Canada. She moved to Toronto in 1978 where she became a co-founder of the Toronto Photographers Workshop. Lake taught for 40 years in Montreal, Toronto, and most recently as head of the University of Guelph photo department. Lake currently lives and makes work in Toronto.

Lake was the subject of a major mid-career retrospective, Point of Reference, organized by the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography in 1993. In 2007 Lake was one of 120 women in the historical show WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution, an exhibition organized by Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art that toured to galleries across the U.S. and Canada, including the Vancouver Art Gallery. Lake's participation in historical exhibitions includes Identity Theft: Eleanor Antin, Lynn Hershman, Suzy Lake, 1972-1978 (Santa Monica Museum of Art), The Pictures Generation (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) and Held Together With Water (Sammlung Verbund, Vienna). In 2014 the Art Gallery of Ontario presented a full-career retrospective titled Introducing Suzy Lake.

Lake’s most recent project involves researching and photographically performing her family history from 1880-1925, which includes traces of Detroit’s rejuvenation. The work is sponsored by a Knight Foundation residency. The photographs in this work are featured in a book titled Suzy Lake: Performing an Archive, published by Dazibao. Prints from the book are scheduled to be exhibited at theMcMaster Museum of Art and the Art Gallery of Windsor.