Mary Lucier has been noted for her contributions to the form of multi-monitor, multi-channel video installation since the early 1970's. Her work prior to her introduction to video was largely concerned with manipulation of the black and white image through a graphic performative process. She also produced several live performances with the feminist video collective Red White Yellow and Black (along with Shigeko Kubota, Cecilia Sandoval and Charlotte Warren) at the original Kitchen in 1972 and '73.
Lucier's video installations have been shown in major museums and galleries around the world. Many now reside in important collections, among them the Whitney Museum of American Art, NY; the Museum of Modern Art, NY; the Reina Sofia, Madrid; the Stedeljik Museum, Amsterdam; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; ZKM, Karlsruhe, Germany; the Milwaukee Art Museum; the Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, OH; the National Academy of Design, New York, NY, among others. She has also produced a significant body of single-channel works which have been screened in museums and festivals world-wide. From the austere black and white experiments of the 1970's to recent studies of Japanese Buddhist ceremonies and Dakota Sioux dances, these works acknowledge the influence of both Avant Garde and documentary practices in American art and cinema.
Lucier has been the recipient of many awards and fellowships, including the National Endowment for the Arts, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, Creative Capital, Anonymous Was a Woman, the Nancy Graves Foundation, USA Artists, the American Film Institute, the Jerome Foundation, the New York State council on the Arts, and the Japan-US Friendship Commission. Her teaching appointments have included the Distinguished Visiting Professor in Art and Art History at UC Davis; Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture; adjunct professor in the department of VES at Harvard University; and Visiting Professor in Video Art at University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, among others.
She lives and works in New York City and Cochecton, NY, where she has established a studio and archive for video art.