Damien Hirst

For over two decades, Damien Hirst’s art practice has confronted cycles of life, death and decay through works that query the margins of mortal existence. He uses a diverse array of biological materials, such as dead animals preserved in formaldehyde and a diamond-encrusted cast of a human skull, to suggest humanity’s limited control over the natural world and the eventual collapse of our own bodies.

Damien Hirst was born in Bristol, England and attended Goldsmiths College of Art at the University of London. In 1988, while still a student, he curated Freeze, an exhibition of student work that was instrumental in defining a prominent group of artists in the 1990s called the Young British Artists (YBA’s). Hirst went on to become one of the world’s wealthiest living artists and sold his work at a Sothebys auction in 2008, independent of a gallery, for a record sum of $198 million. He received the prestigious Turner Prize in 1995 and has exhibited widely, including shows at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, New York, NY (2006), the Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy (2003), and the Tate Modern, London, England (2001). The artist lives and works in London and Devon.

Text © Museum of Contemporary Photography, 2018