Susan Brockman
Hothouse Flower

From February 11 to April 3, 2027
Opening on February 11 at 6 pm

Susan Brockman (1937-2001) was a filmmaker and photographer active in the New York art scene from the 1960s to the 1990s. She was a member of the feminist collective Women/Artist/Filmmakers, whose members came together to support, validate, and fund one another's work. Made within this context, the short experimental film Hothouse Flowerobserves women devoted to their labours. The camera’s halted gaze meets them, agreeing to be seen, unyielding in their pensive stillness and assertive in their creative gestures. Present both behind and in front of the camera, Brockman moves through different proximities to her film’s making, engaged in the reciprocities between desire and image.

Susan Brockman’s distinctive gift for framing, editing, and collage created interior worlds and tableaux with powerful, yet enigmatic, emotional resonance. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts in painting from Cornell University in 1958 and studied cinematography at New York University. She lectured at the School of Visual Arts in New York, the New York Public Library, Montclair State University in New Jersey and the University of Cincinnati, and was editor of Arts Magazine from 1966-68. Brockman worked alongside influential figures in the film and art worlds, including Willem de Kooning, Robert Frank, Dan Graham, Carolee Schneemann, Linda Rosenkrantz, Peter Hujar, Danny Seymour and Diane Arbus. Her films include Depot (1974) and Hothouse Flower (1978), dance films with choreographer Sally Gross; Stopped in Her Tracks (1982) and Lee's Ferry (1983), and Soul of a Dog (1987), after Franz Kafka. Brockman's work was supported by the Jerome Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, NYWIFT/WFPF, and the NY State Council on the Arts, and is held by the Hirshhorn Museum and Smith College Museum of Art. In 2021, the non-profit organization Soft Network began a three-year journey into her archive, reintroducing her contributions to experimental image-making—work recently recognized with a 2024 solo exhibition in New York and at the inaugural Cultish x OFFSCREEN Prize in Paris. In 2026, Depot was included in exhibitions at the Ortuzar Gallerys How Beautiful This Living Thing Is, and at the Morgan Library and Museum’s Hujar: Contact, both in New York.