Asher Hartman

Education

• MFA, California Institute of the Arts
• BA, UCLA

Bio and Affiliation

Asher Hartman is a visual artist, writer, director, and maker of live performances. His works, which combine strategies of theater and performance art, grapple with social and political issues in an era of chronic crisis. His works are dense, visual, poetic embodied texts, infused with clown and cringe humor, evidence of trance and psychic journeying, set in engulfing installations designed to disorient, unnerve, and elicit strong feeling.  Asher Hartman is the director and founder of Gawdafful National Theater, a group of visual artists, actors, and performance artists with whom he has created since 2010.  He is the recipient of the Performance Art Museum's first Long Term Artist Residency (2026-2025), the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists (2024) and the California Community Foundation Fellowship for the Visual Arts (2022).

Awards and Honors

• Performance Art Museum's Long Term Artist Residency (2026-2025)
  
• Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists (2024)
  
• California Community Foundation Fellowship for the Visual Arts (2022)

Publications

• 2025
  • Pablo José Ramirez, "Best of 2025, Top Ten," Artforum
  • “Blessed with Switch (with an introduction by Martin Harries),” Georgia Review
  • Dorothy Dubrule, "The Mommy Leaks the Floor, " Performance Art Museum
  • Hannah Tishkoff, "The Mommy Leaks the Floor at New Theater Hollywood," Artillery
  • Nancy Popp, "The Juice of Woman: The Mommy Leaks the Floor," Performance Art Museum
• 2024
  • Asher Hartman, About Blessed, Mimesis: Film as Performance
• 2023
  • Harries, Martin “Having Once Been Beautiful,” Los Angeles Review of Books
• 2022
  • “Lifes," Hammer Museum
• 2020
  • Asher, Hartman, Mad Clot on a Holy Bone: Memories of a Psychic Theater

Professional Accomplishments

• 2026 Blessed with Switch as part of "Speaking in Tongues," ICA/LA
• 2025 The Mommy Leaks the Floor, New Theater Hollywood
• 2024 Blessed with Switch, Centre Pompidou, 2024 and UCI Art of Performance
• 2023 It's Better to Start Out Ugly, JOAN, 2023 and The Lab, San Francisco
• 2021-19 The Dope Elf and Six Films from the Dope Elf, Yale Union and The Lab
• 2017 Sorry Atlantis: Eden’s Achin’ Organ Seeks Revenge,  Machine Project 
• 2017 Mr. Akita, Hauser & Wirth and Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley, and  Tang Teaching Museum, NY 
• 2015 The Silver, the Black, the Wicked Dance” LACMA
• 2014 “Purple Electric Play” Machine Project, Los Angeles
• 2013 “Glass Bang”Machine Project as part of Pacific Standard Time Presents: Modern Architecture in L.A; the MAK Center; Cannonball, Miami, Florida; Artbound, PBS, Season 4, Episode 2
• Southern Exposure, San Francisco
• 2012 “See What Love The Father Has Given Us, Machine Project, Los Angeles
• 2010 “Annie Okay!” Hammer Museum, Los Angeles
• 2010 "Bad Thing," Sea and Space Explorations, Los Angeles

Clients and Employment History