Hito Steyerl – German Artist

As a filmmaker, writer, visual artist, and innovator of the essay documentary, Hito Steyerl blurs the line between fine arts and cinema. Many believe her work closes the gap between artist and cultural critic, as well as, practice and theory.

At the Berlin Biennale, Steyerl was given ample floor space to display her incisive e-flux essays that interlace subjectivity with digital technology. In fact, her elaborate art practice is the spotlight of the tech-savvy generation. It has taken awhile for her amazing work of writing, CGI-driven video and synthesis of lecture performances to gain attention and become center stage, but it was popular with many people in 2016. Her writing anatomised virtual simulation and video games, which resonated with the younger generations, like her work called How Not to Be Seen.

Her works seems to be everywhere, from the Inter alla in the Sao Paulo Biennial to the Los Angeles where her key piece Factory of the Sun was reprised, even showing up in Madrid’s Museo Reina Sofia or the Berlin Transmediale festival as a keynote speaker. She has been nominated for the Artes Mundi Prize, which make sense due to her “my-way-or-the-highway” approach. In 2016, Steyerl was named one of the year’s most influential people in the contemporary art world by ArtReview magazine.

The feminine name Hito means “intellect” or “wisdom” in Japanese. However, no one knows the meaning of the name outside the Japanese language. The name is not common, therefore, there are not many people with the given name Hito.