(b.1958 London) studied at St Martin's School of Art, London (1978-1981) and Chelsea College of Art and Design, London (1981-1982). She is now based in London having lived in Australia, New York and Berlin. Initially recognized in the 1980’s as a painter, she became a pioneer in the digital/new media/web-based field from the beginning of the 1990’s, making work about emerging technologies, developing fictional worlds and international collaborative organisations. Utilising various media, including video, the internet, interactive technologies, photography, drawing and watercolour, Treister has evolved a large body of work which engages with eccentric narratives and unconventional bodies of research to reveal structures that bind power, identity and knowledge. Often spanning several years, her projects comprise fantastical reinterpretations of given taxonomies and histories that examine the existence of covert, unseen forces at work in the world, whether corporate, military or paranormal. An ongoing focus of her work is the relationship between new technologies, society, alternative belief systems and the potential futures of humanity.
As well as solo exhibitions of her work, Treister participates extensively in collective projects and collaborations around the world and is an active and sometimes founder member of many groups and organisations. Her recent solo exhibitions include The Escapist BHST (Black Hole Spacetime) an ongoing digital work at the Serpentine Galleries, London; HFT The Gardener/Outsider artworks, OEGGK, Vienna, Austria; SURVIVOR (F) to The Escapist BHST (Back Hole Spacetime) Annely Juda Fine Art, London. Recent group projects include: Back to Future, Technikvisionen zwischen Science-Fiction und Realität , Museum für Kommunikation, Frankfurt am Main, Germany; Not Without My Ghost s, Hayward Gallery Touring Exhibition; To the Edge of Time , KU University Library, Leuven, Belgium; Nature of Robotics, An Expanded Field , EPFL Pavillions, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Lausanne, Switzerland.
Treister has work in a number of important international Public and Museum collections including Art Gallery of South Australia, Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Melbourne; British Council, Leeds City Gallery, New Hall Gallery, Cambridge, UK; Nordstern Gallery, Köln, Germany and Digital/CD ROM Library Collections including Tate Britain, British Museum, London; University of Auckland, New Zealand; L'Espace Multimédia Gantner, France, Fundacio Antoni Tapies Biblioteca, Barcelona, Spain.
