Barbara de Genevieve has been a professor of photography at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) since 1994. She has also taught at the University of Illinois and California State University, San Jose. Known first for her work as a photographer, de Genevieve has exhibited in Tokyo, Frankfurt, and numerous esteemed galleries in the USA. She has also lectured at the Glasgow School of Art, CalArts, Rhode Island School of Design, and New York University.
Much of her art explores the connections among dominance, power, and sex, including their inverse relationships. This has led de Genevieve into controversy, particularly during the NEA funding “witch hunts” of the early 1990s. She has spoken on many occasions on issues of censorship as a direct result. On some occasions (such as the e-poets link-up where she is pictured above), she uses performative texts or poems, gothic costume, and theatrical tactics to amplify her point. She’ll speak in character as parody or as the subject of her discourse, but always with a sense of humor and charity for her subject. She continues to court controversy, having established an interdisciplinary and new media arts program at SAIC that instructs students on constructing sexually graphic artworks.
de Genevieve has won awards from the National Endowment for the Arts (Visual Artist Fellowship); Art Matters Foundation Fellowship; and the Illinois Arts Council. Her critical and artistic works have been published in Exposure, SF Camerawork Magazine, and P-Form. Ezell Gallery, Chicago, represents her photographic work.