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.
