Mary Kelly

Mary Kelly studied painting at St. Martin’s School of Art, London, 1968-1970, where she began her long-term critique of conceptualism, informed by feminism. Since then, she has addressed questions of sexuality, identity, and memory in the form of large-scale narrative installations such as Post-Partum Document, 1973-79, Interim, 1984-89, Love Songs, 2005-2007, The Ballad of Kastriot Rexhepi, 2001, Circa Trilogy, 2004-2016, Addendum, 2023-present.

A retrospective of her work was organized by Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester, 2011. Major surveys were presented at Moderna Museet, Stockholm, 2010, Centre for Contemporary Art, Warsaw, 2008, Generali Foundation, Vienna, 1998, Helsinki City Art Museum, 1994, and the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, 1990. Her work was also featured in Desert X Biennial, 2019, Unlimited, Art Basel, 2016, Biennale of Sydney, 1982 and 2008, Documenta 12, Kassel, Whitney Biennial, 1991, 2004 and 2024, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Her publications include Post-Partum Document, University of California Press, 1998, Rereading Post-Partum Document, Generali Foundation, Vienna,1999, Imaging Desire, MIT Press, Cambridge, 1996, Dialogue, Iaspis, Stockholm, 2011 and Mary Kelly’s Concentric Pedagogy: Selected Writings, edited by Juli Carson, Bloomsbury, London, 2024.

In 2015, she was awarded the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship and in 2026, she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Currently, she is Distinguished Professor Emerita, UCLA School of Art and Architecture and Judge Widney Professor Emerita, USC Roski School of Art and Design.