Suzy Lake (b. 1947, Detroit, USA; lives and works in Toronto, Canada)

Choreographed Puppets (1976-77)

For over five decades, Suzy Lake has used her body and image as both subject and tool to explore the complexities of identity, power, and embodiment. Her work, spanning performance, video, and photography, reflects a persistent and rigorous commitment to challenging gender, age, and identity constructs, forging a visual and conceptual language of feminist critique that continues to resonate today.

In Choreographed Puppets (1976-77), the bound figure becomes a metaphor to question notions of control, manipulation and powerlessness. In the series, Lake’s body is suspended in a harness: thrashing, dancing, and manipulated by two puppeteers above. Captured through long-exposure photography, the black-and-white images record her airborne form, revealing the conflicting subtleties of bodily surrender: uncomfortable submission to external control, vulnerability before the gaze, and the playfulness of swinging gestures. The resulting painterly blur challenges the documentary precision expected of the medium at the time, evoking the energy and uncontrollability of the performance. Presented alongside a life-size recreation of the original puppet stand, the installation foregrounds the material conditions of Lake’s performance. Using her body as both subject and object, Lake examines how gender, identity, and bodily autonomy become sites of political struggle.

Lake’s political and artistic consciousness was shaped by her social justice work in the civil rights movement in her hometown of Detroit, then sustained by the artist-led cultural surge of the 1970s in Montreal, where she played a pivotal role in advancing Conceptualism in Canada and beyond.

Lake’s 2014–15 retrospective, Introducing Suzy Lake, at the Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto) marked a full-career survey. She has been featured in landmark feminist exhibitions including WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution (2007) and WOMAN: The Feminist Avant-Garde of the 1970s (touring internationally since 2013, including Vienna, 2017). Other group exhibitions include the Centre Pompidou-Metz, Metz (2024); the Albertina, Vienna (2024); the Museum of Modern Art, New York (2022); the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2020, 2009); the Hayward Gallery, London (2018); and the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2007). Her work is held in major international public and private collections including The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; Sammlung Verbund, Vienna; and the Detroit Institute of Arts.

Bradley Ertaskiran is a leading contemporary art gallery in Montreal, Canada, occupying two distinct spaces within a restored industrial building. Committed to the long-term development of Canadian and international artists, the gallery represents diverse practices across painting, sculpture, photography, video, and installation, including established artists alongside emerging and mid-career practitioners. Through participation in major art fairs and collaboration with curators and institutions, Bradley Ertaskiran advances its artists while enriching the cultural landscape through international dialogue and investment in the local art community.