AA BRONSON (b. 1946, Vancouver) is an artist living and working in Berlin and New York City. In the 1960s, he left university with a group of friends to found a free school, a commune, and an underground newspaper. This led him into an adventure with gestalt therapy, radical education, and independent publishing. In 1969 he formed the artists’ group General Idea with Felix Partz and Jorge Zontal; for the next twenty-five years they lived and worked together to produce the living artwork of being together, undertaking over 100 solo exhibitions, and countless group shows and temporary public art projects. They were known for FILE Megazine (1972 – 1989), their unrelenting production of low-cost multiples, and their early involvement in punk, queer theory, and AIDS activism.

Since his partners died in 1994, AA Bronson has explored the subjects of death, grieving, and healing, most recently in his performance series Invocation of the Queer Spirits. He has had solo exhibitions at the List Visual Arts Center at MIT (2002), Cambridge; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (2001); The Power Plant, Toronto (2003/2004); and the Secession, Vienna (2000), among other venues. In 2008 he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada, and in 2011 named a Chevalier de l’ordre des arts et des lettres by the French government. He is represented by Esther Schipper, Berlin.

AA Bronson’s work—as an artist, healer, curator, and educator—is dominated by the practice of collaboration and consensus. From his beginnings in a free school and commune, through his twenty-five years as one of the artists of General Idea, in his deep involvement with founding and developing collaborative and social structures such as Art Metropole, the NY Art Book Fair, and The Institute for Art, Religion, and Social Justice, and through his current collaborations with younger generations, he has focused on the politics of decision-making and on living life radically.