A.L. Steiner: Irthebound

Irthebound frames the central tenet of life on Earth as a multifaceted engagement with the terms and politics of ecofeminism, first coined in writing by French author and activist Françoise d’Eaubonne in her 1974 book Le Féminisme ou la Mort (Feminism or Death)*. The manifesto outlines the revolutionary potential of environmentalism and feminism to liberate nature and suppressed peoples.

Featuring video, photography, sculpture and archival material, the exhibition draws on d’Eaubonne’s description of a political apparatus that fuses racial crapitalism, sexual orientation and ecological crisis to produce a dire futurity and history defined by patriarchal ignorance, domination, violence and unfettered greed. The exhibition also debut’s Steiner’s film To Change Everything (2023), extending her three-channel documentary More Real Than Reality Itself, which premiered at the 2014 Whitney Biennial.     

Irthebound roams the conditions and languages of everyday irthling encounters, managing practical impossibilities of existence or change within the madness of contemporary life. In her expansive practice, Steiner utilizes constructions of photography, video, installation, collage, collaboration, performance, writing and curatorial work channeled through the sensibility of a skeptical queer ecofeminist androgyne.

Curated by Howie Chen.

*Le Féminisme ou la Mort, (Feminism or Death) was translated for the first time in English in 2022, published by Verso Books.

A.L. Steiner
Steiner is based in New York, and has been featured internationally in such venues as PS1/MoMA, Tate Modern, The New Museum and Reina Sofia.  Her work resides  in permanent collections such as the Brooklyn Museum of Art, Baltimore Museum of Art, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Marieluise Hessel Collection of Contemporary Art at CCS Bard College, Institute of Contemporary Art Miami, Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art and Julia Stoschek Collection, among others.

She is recipient of the Art Matters Foundation Grant, Tiffany Foundation Award, The American Academy in Berlin Prize, Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists Award, and Guggenheim Fellowship.  Steiner is co-curator of Ridykeulous, co-founder of Working Artists and the Greater Economy (W.A.G.E.) and collaborates with numerous writers, performers, designers, activists and artists. She is Faculty and Director at Yale University’s School of Art and is represented by Deborah Schamoni Galerie.