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chr|stIne werthe|m is a former painter with a PhD in literature and semiotics from Middlesex University, London. She is a poet, critic, curator and performer, andEmeritus Faculty of the California Institute of the Arts. She is the author of The Book of Me (Counterpath Press, Boulder, Colorado, 2016), of mUtter-bAbel (Counterpath Press, 2013), +|‘me’S-pace (Les Figues Press, 2006), and Corpus, a chapbook from Triage (2006); co-editor of the anthologies Feminaissance, (with Teresa Carmody,Les Figues Press), Séance (with Matias Viegener, Make Now Press), and The The /n/oulipian Analects (with Matias Viegener, Les Figues Press). In 2004 she was awarded a grant from The Annenberg Foundation to organize a series of conferences on contemporary writing: Séance (2004), nOoulipo (2005), Impunities (2006), Feminaissance (2007), Untitled (2008), Untitled NY (2009). Her poetry appears in numerous anthologies, including Against Expression, The & Now Awards: The Best Innovative Writing, I’ll Drown My Book, The LA Telephone Book, and Out of Nothing. Her critical writing on art, literature and aesthetics has been widely published including in, Cabinet, X-tra, The Quick and the Dead, Issues in Contemporary Art, Patarcitical Interogation Techniques, vol. 3., and Construction Sites for Possible Worlds.
From 2001-2021 she taught critical studies and creative writing at the California Institute of the Arts in Los Angeles, and from 1995 – 2000 in the Fine Art Department of Goldsmiths College, and at the Slade School of Fine Art.
Her performances include sound poems, puppet plays, and vocal tributes to Valie Export, Jean-Pierre Brisset and Samuel Beckett. She performs widely in the US and abroad–Counterpath, Denver, the University of Colorado, Boulder, the Echo Park Film Center, University of Western Sydney, Melbourne University, La Sorbonne, Birkbeck College, London, amongst others.
Since 2017, she has been an organizing member of the CalArts’ Center for Discursive Research, hosting talks and symposia on the intersections of art, science and philosophy.
From 2017-2023, she travelled between Los Angeles and Buenos Aires as a member of the LA Forum of the École de Psychoanalyses des Forums du Champ, an international school of analysts and researchers.
Current research looks at gender ideologies in Western society, arguing that the Western form of patriarchy is distinct from others in that, here, women are not just seen as secondary, they play no positive role in dominant conceptual schemas. In Western patriarchy (with its claim to being grounded in logic), woman are construed as merely the Others, or “Not-All” of phallically-defined men, a notion not generally embedded in other patriarchal systems. I argue that this mono-ideology has deeply negative effects, both psychically and socially, which I unpack and outline in my research.
With her sister Margaret, she co-directs the Institute For Figuring, (IFF), curating exhibitions and events on the intersection of art, science and mathematics. In 2005 they created the Crochet Coral Reef project, a global experiment in applied mathematics, community art, evolutionary theory and craft practice, conducted through a feminist lens. It now has over 30,000 participants in 53 cities and countries. The work has been shown at international venues such as the Hayward Gallery (London, 2009), Museum Frieder Burda (Germany, 2021), the Venice Biennale (2019), Helsinki Biennial (2021), and Schlossmuseum Linz (2023, 2024). It has yielded two monographs, and has been written about widely in academic contexts and mainstream press, including The New York Times and Guardian. Many feminist scholars have covered the work, includingDonna Haraway, in Staying with the Trouble, and Eva Hayward. In 2026, the project will be exhibited at MIT Museum. In 2011 the sisters received the Theo Westenberger Grant for Outstanding Female Artists from the Autry National Center for their work on the Reef.
https://www.theiff.org/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/christine-wertheim-94725520a/
contact: wertheim@calarts.edu
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Interviews:
BOMB – “Artists on Artists: Christine and Margaret Wertheim”
Søren Kierkegaard Interviews Christine Wertheim, {outward from nothingness}
Entropy – Amanda Montei with Christine Wertheim
The Brooklyn Rail –Written at the Body, Christine Wertheim with Alexandra Chasin