Regina Frank is a German artist mainly working with text and textile installation and performance. Since 1989, she has been one of the pioneers of combining performance art with technology, integrating the Internet and interactive social software installations. Her performances and installations deal with social and political-social issues and link digital media with traditional text transformed into textiles.
Regina Frank has been exhibiting her installations under the title “The Artist is Present” internationally in windows, museums and public spaces. Her first book “The Artist is Present” was published in 1999. Inspired by the adaptation of Regina Frank‘s title at Marina Abramović's MOMA exhibition The Artist Is Present after 21 years in 2010, Frank changed to "The Art is Present" in 2015, introducing the focus on the Art: going deeper into the present and the artist's gift. Later 2017 she advanced to the motto and overall title “The HeArT is Present”. Using the dress to address, her work is a creative information processing, data visualization, bridging handiwork and technology, tangible and virtual, creating incentives for communication, discussion and dialogues.
Regina Frank has lectured at M.I.T. Boston, Saint Martin's School of Art London, New York University, the MET, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. She was artist in resident at Wacoal Art Center, in Tokamachi and S-AIR Sapporo in Japan, Kio-A-Thau Residency Taiwan, Guangzhou-Live-4 China, Montalvo Arts Center, USA, Universitat Politècnica de València, Spain and Chienkuo Technology University Taiwan. Her works have been displayed at the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York, Serpentine Gallery in London, the Bronx Museum in New York, Kunsthalle in Berlin, Reina Sofia in Madrid, MOCA in Los Angeles, Spiral Wacoal Art Center in Tokyo and at the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta, ARCO in Madrid, 2001 Expo Hannover and 2003 San Diego Museum of Art. iLAND launched in 2011 and in 2013 during the Venice Biennale (Infr’action)] and 2017 at London Artfair. Since 2013 iLAND was shown in the USA, Portugal, Finland, France, Holland and China and 2018 at the MAAT (Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology) in Lisbon.
Franks work has been featured in many publications including: Sculpture Magazine, Studio Art Magazine, Asahi Evening News, Studio Voice, Screen Multimedia, Parade Magazine, Harper’s, The New York Times, in Time Out Rethinking Marxism, Vogue, Cosmopolitan, Frankfurter Rundschau, FAZ, Japan Times, Contemporary Art, Art Papers, Art Examiner, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Art Press, Being on Line, Arte y Parte, Public Art and Ecology On the Issues Magazine and Allgemeine Zeitung.
Early life and education
Regina Frank, born in 1965, is the daughter of Elisabeth Frank and Franz Josef Frank, and grew up in a small town in Germany, in Meßkirch, where she kept a base until the death of her mother 2016. Due to the families’ and her home-towns close connection to Martin Heidegger, she devoted much of her youth to art and philosophy, later ventured into Zen Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta. She studied Sinology and Sanskrit, Old Oriental Studies at Freie Universität Berlin until she got accepted at the costume design department and later at the Visual Arts Department at Universität der Künste Berlin.
Here she did her Masters with Katharina Sieverding. As a tutor she taught photography and printing and organized many artist talks between 1990 and 1992, among others with John Cage, Joan Jonas, Marina Abramović, Alfredo Jaar, Antoni Muntadas, Joseph Kosuth, Dara Birnbaum, Christina Kubisch, Hans Haacke, Guerilla Girls, Stephen Willats and Nan Goldin. She was a founding member of the student organization Interflugs, which represented the students interests to the administration and to professors, and gave access to at the time advanced technological equipment, such as computers, video projectors, editing equipment and video cameras. Together with her fellow students, she advocated equal rights and demanded a higher share of women as female professors at the still predominantly male college of arts. Consequently, she was very active in the student strike.