Riva Lehrer is an artist, writer and curator, whose work focuses on issues of physical identity and the socially challenged body.
Ms. Lehrer’s work has been seen in venues including the United Nations, the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, DC, the Arnot Museum, the DeCordova Museum, the Frye Museum, the Smithsonian Museum, the Chicago Cultural Center, the State of Illinois Museum, and the Elmhurst Museum. She has been a visiting artist and lecturer across the US and Europe.
Her work has been featured in numerous documentaries, including The Paper Mirror (2012) by Charissa King-O’Brien, on her collaboration with graphic novelist Alison Bechdel; Self Preservation: The Art of Riva Lehrer (2005) by David Mitchell and Sharon Snyder; Variations (2014), by Laurie Little and Anuradha Rana; and Code of the Freaks by Salome Chasnoff, Carrie Sandahl, and Susan Nussbaum.
Awards include the 2015 Three Arts Residency Fellowship at the University of Illinois, the 2014 Mellon Residency Fellowship at Haverford and Bryn Mawr Colleges; the 2009 Prairie Fellowship at the Ragdale Foundation. Grants include the 2009 Critical Fierceness Grant, the 2008 Three Arts Foundation Grant, and the 2006 Wynn Newhouse Award for Excellence, (NYC). Other awards include those from the Illinois Arts Council, the University of Illinois and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Ms. Lehrer’s writing and visual art are included in publications including Criptiques, edited by Caitlin Wood, 2014, and Sex and Disability, Duke University Press, edited by Robert McRuer and Anna Mollow, 2011, and TriQuarterly, the literary journal of Northwestern University, in 2013 and 2014, for which she received a Special Mention Pushcart Prize.
Riva Lehrer is currently instructor in Medical Humanities at Northwestern University.