Martin O'Brien Lecture

Martin O'Brien, The Last Breath Society (Coughing Coffin), 2020. Photo: Holly Revell

Join us for a lecture by artist Martin O’Brien followed by an audience Q & A. 

Doors open at 5:45 p.m. Free and open to the public. Registration is not required. Explore the Visiting Artists Program homepage for visitor information, recordings of past events, and more.

Martin O’Brien is an artist and zombie. He works across performance, writing, and video art. O’Brien has cystic fibrosis and all of his work and writing draws upon this experience. His work uses long durational actions, short speculative texts, critical rants, and performance processes in order to explore death and dying, what it means to be born with a life-shortening disease, and the philosophical implications of living longer than expected. He has shown work throughout the UK, Europe, the US, and Canada and is well known for his solo performances and collaborations with the legendary LA artist and dominatrix Sheree Rose. His most recent works were at Tate Britain in 2020 and the ICA London in 2021, and he was Writer in Residence at Whitechapel Gallery in 2023. He is the winner of the Philip Leverhulme Prize for Visual and Performing Arts 2022. In 2018, the book Survival of the Sickest: The Art of Martin O’Brien was published by Live Art Development Agency. His work has been featured on BBC radio and Sky Arts television and as a double-page spread in The Guardian. He is currently senior lecturer in Live Art at Queen Mary University of London.

Presented in partnership with SAIC's Wellness Center.

This event will be live captioned by Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) services. The auditorium is wheelchair accessible and hearing assisted devices are available. For additional access requests, visit saic.edu/access.