Amy Gottlieb (1954-2023) was a Toronto-based artist and educator. Born and raised in New York City, she moved to Canada in 1972. Her work explores family histories, the intersection of personal and historical memory and the relationship between cognitive and body memories. Her award-winning 1997 video In Living Memory screened at over 25 festivals across North America and on television. Tempest in a Teapot, a 1987 video about Amy’s mother and her radical political activities, screened at five festivals around Toronto and was exhibited as an installation at A Space Gallery in Toronto, complete with wallpaper created from her mother’s FBI files. Her 2010 photo-based work FBI Family speaks to the social and political textures of state surveillance, both historic and contemporary. These photomontages are densely layered images combining her mother’s FBI surveillance files with archival family photos. Gottlieb taught photography and art at a Toronto high school. She was a social justice activist since shedding her red diapers, active in anti-racist, feminist, anti-colonial and LGBTQ struggles.

Artist Code: 062