Jill Magid (American, b. 1973) is a conceptual artist, writer, and filmmaker whose performance-based practice interrogates structures of power on an intimate level. She works by forming personal relationships with governmental systems of authority, including police and intelligence agencies, embedding herself within them.Her narratives often take the form of a love story, following an institution's rules of engagement to the letter, sometimes to the point of absurdity.
In 2005 she was commissioned by the Dutch Secret Service (AIVD) to humanize the agency through interviews with its members, and went further by obtaining security clearance and effectively becoming an agent herself.The five-year project produced her novel Becoming Tarden, shown in both AIVD-redacted and unredacted, glass-secured forms, and closed in 2008 with the exhibition “Article 12” at Stroom Den Haag in the Netherlands, which marked the formal end of the commission.,In 2009 Tate Modern presented “Authority to Remove”, her first UK solo exhibition, drawing on the AIVD commission alongside neon sculptures from I Can Burn Your Face and drawings from The Directives.
Her ongoing series The Barragán Archives (2013–2016) examines the legacy of Mexican architect Luis Barragán, whose professional archive is owned by the Swiss furniture company Vitra. Refused access to that archive, she has made sculpture, photography, and film that push against the boundary of copyright infringement without crossing it, asking “what does it mean for a corporation to own an artist's legacy?” Seven works from the series' first chapter, Woman with Sombrero, entered the permanent collection of the Centre Pompidou.
In her NFT project Out-Game Flowers, Magid turns collectible items from video games into flower bouquets, treating the rituals of collectability itself as her medium rather than adopting NFTs purely as a speculative wager.
