Carolyn Lazard

Carolyn Lieba Francois Lazard (born 1987) is an American artist based in New York. Lazard uses the experience of chronic illness to examine concepts of intimacy and the labor of living involved with chronic illnesses. Lazard is a 2019 Pew Foundation Fellow, one of the first recipients of The Ford Foundation's 2020 Disability Futures Fellows Awards and a 2021 United States Artist Fellow. In 2023, Lazard was selected as a recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship, colloquially known as the "genius grant."

Early life and education Carolyn Lieba Francois Lazard was born in 1987 in Upland, California and grew up in San Bernardino. They earned their MFA degree in 2019 from the University of Pennsylvania.

Art career Lazard's work has been exhibited internationally including at the Kunstverein Braunschweig, Braunschweig; Nottingham Contemporary, Nottingham; Museum Für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt; Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin; Museum Ludwig, Cologne; and the CAPC Musée d'Art Contemporain, Bordeaux. Nationally, they have exhibited at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; New Museum, New York; and had screenings at the Anthology Film Archives, New York. Lazard was included in the 2019 and 2024 Whitney Biennial, the 2021 Greater New York, the 2022 Venice Biennale, and the 2023 NGV Triennial.

Lazard's published works include a 2019 work commissioned by Recess titled Accessibility in the Arts: A Promise and a Practice and The World is Unknown, published by Triple Canopy as a part of their Immaterial Literature project area.

In 2019, Lazard co-organized the I Wanna Be With You Everywhere festival celebrating disability arts in New York City.

One of Lazard's works, Support System (For Park, Tina, and Bob), 2016, was featured on the cover of Art Papers' winter 2018/2019 edition. The work documents a 12-hour performance completed by the artist where they spent the day in bed. For the 2017 New Museum exhibition "Trigger: Gender as a Tool and a Weapon" Lazard installed A Conspiracy (2017), 12 white-noise machines (the sort used in therapists' offices) installed in one of the elevators. As a collective they have exhibited at Recess, New York; Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, New York; and Franklin Street Works, Connecticut.

Artistic practice In March 2017, Lazard co-signed an open letter written by Hannah Black demanding the Whitney Biennial remove the Open Casket painting by Dana Schutz. In 2021, the Pew Center for Arts asked Lazard to cite a queer work that shaped their practice, Lazard named Artist Panteha Abareshi's video work, For Medical Use Only (2019).

Exhibitions 2016 – Anthology Film Archives, New York City 2017 – Trigger: Gender as a Tool and a Weapon, New Museum, New York City 2018 – Crip Time, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, NL 2018 – Post Institutional Stress Disorder 2, Kunsthal Aarhus, Germany 2018 – A Recipe for Disaster, Camden Art Centre, London, UK 2018 – the Kitchen, New York City 2018 – epigenetic, Shoot the Lobster, New York City 2018 – Essex Street Gallery, New York City 2019 – Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN 2020 – SYNC, Essex Street Gallery, New York City 2022 – Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN 2022 – Nottingham Contemporary, Nottingham 2023 – Institute of Contemporary Art, Pennsylvania 2025 – Artists Space, New York City 2025 – Trautwein Herleth, Berlin