Through a transdisciplinary practice integrating sculpture, performance and video, Lu Heintz (she/they) engages feminist ethics of care, labor, and technology. The work develops from feminist and queer histories and often elucidates the conditions of invisible labor, with particular focus on the sensual, affective experiences of the body. Heintz creates sculptures preoccupied with material histories and artifacts such as clothing, furniture, equipment and tools, observing and reflecting the co-constitution of bodies and objects. These projects perforate normative standards and upend paradigms of use-value and ability.
Heintz balances her artistic endeavors with feminist scholarship and pedagogy and teaches in the Division of Experimental and Foundation Studies, RISD. Areas of focus include gender justice, queer theory, affect, performance studies, and feminist economic perspectives. Heintz has contributed essays to Book Marks (Pressing Concern Books: NY, 2020), Repair: Sustainable Design Futures (Routledge: London, 2023), and Event Scores by Artist-Parents (Rooftop Ins.: Hong Kong, 2023). Heintz’s practice has grown from DIY spaces, collectives, community organizing and care webs. Social practices include collaborative zines, educational workshops, mutual aid, feminist Wikipedia editing and intersectional reading groups.
Heintz holds a BFA in Sculpture from Rhode Island School of Design and an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Heintz has been a resident at Vermont Studio Center, MASS MoCA, Arts Letters & Numbers (NY), and Baer Art Center (Iceland). Recent exhibitions include the RISD Museum; Metal Museum (TN); LHUCA (TX); Strano Film Fest (IT); and Wedding Cake House (RI). They have received awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts, Rhode Island State Council on the Arts, International Sculpture Center, Sustainable Arts Foundation and recently received a 2024 Mellon Foundation fellowship for the Providence Commemoration Lab, re-imagining monuments and public forms of memory.