Hito Steyerl was born in 1966 in Munich. Steyerl studied at the Academy of Visual Arts, Tokyo and the University of Television and Film, Munich. She also completed a doctorate in philosophy at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna. She currently lives and works in Berlin.
Steyerl has held teaching positions at several institutions including KUVA Helsinki, as a visiting professor for Artistic Research Theory (2012–13); University of Arts Berlin, as a professor for Experimental film and video (since 2011); Royal Academy of Copenhagen, as a visiting professor at the School for Conceptual Art (2009–10); Goldsmiths College London, as a convener of MA’s in Cultural and Postcolonial Studies; and the University of Arts Berlin, as a visiting professor for Gender and Cultural Studies (2001-03). From 2014 to 2017, Steyerl co-founded the Research Centre for Proxy Politics at the University of Arts Berlin. The initiative led a series of workshops and in 2017, it concluded with a final conference, The Proxy and Its Politics, and the publication of Proxy Politics. Power and Subversion in a Networked Age (Archive Books, Berlin). In 2021, Steyerl received the Honorary B3 BEN Award in the category Art. Steyerl is the recipient of the 2019 Käthe Kollwitz Prize from Akademie der Künste in Berlin. In 2015, Steyerl was awarded the EYE Prize from the EYE Film Institute Netherlands and the Paddy & Joan Leigh Fermor Arts Fund. In 2010, she received the New:Vision Award from the Copenhagen International Documentary Festival.
The artist’s work is held in numerous collections including the Centre national des arts plastiques, Paris; Contemporary Art Society, London; Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw; Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas; Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Marieluise Hessel Collection at CCS Bard, Annandale-on-Hudson; Hirshhorn Museum, Washington D.C.; Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; Kunstmuseum kloster unser lieben frauen, Magdeburg; Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Chicago; Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, St. Louis; Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, Montreal; Museum of Modern Art, New York; San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Tate, London; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid; Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.