Join artist Martha Rosler in conversation with the AGO’s Sophie Hackett about Rosler’s five decades-long practice, including the foundational The Bowery in two inadequate descriptive systems (1974–75), currently on view at the AGO.

Martha Rosler works in video, photography, text, installation, and performance. Her work focuses on the public sphere, exploring issues from everyday life and the media to architecture and the built environment, especially as they affect women. Rosler has for many years produced works on war and the national security climate, connecting life at home with the conduct of war abroad, in which her photomontage series played a critical part. She has also published several books of photographs, texts, and commentary on public space, ranging from airports and roads to housing and gentrification. A retrospective of her work has been shown internationally, and her writing is published widely in publications such as Artforum, e-flux journal, and Texte zur Kunst. Rosler lives and works in Brooklyn.

Sophie Hackett has been a member of the AGO’s department of photography since 2006. During her tenure she has curated many exhibitions and collection installations, written and contributed to a number of publications, participated on international juries and maintained an active academic profile. She is currently an adjunct faculty member in Ryerson University’s Master’s degree program in Film + Photography Preservation and Collections Management, and was a 2017 Fellow with the Center for Curatorial Leadership. Hackett’s areas of specialty include vernacular photographs; photography in relation to queerness; and photography in Canada from the1960s to the 1990s. Hackett’s curatorial projects include Barbara Kruger: Untitled (It) (2010); Max Dean: Album, A Public Project (2012); What It Means To be Seen: Photography and Queer Visibility and Fan the Flames: Queer Positions in Photography (2014); Introducing Suzy Lake (2014); Outsiders: American Photography and Film, 1950s–1980s (2016); Anthropocene (2018) and Diane Arbus: Photographs, 1956–1971 (2020).