Julia Scher was born in Hollywood, California, in 1954. She completed her BFA in painting, sculpture and graphic design at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in 1975 and her master’s degree at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, in 1984. From 2006 until 2021, she was a professor of media art at the Academy of Media Arts, Cologne. Her work has been shown at the Venice Biennale and the Whitney Biennial in New York as well as in solo and group exhibitions worldwide, for instance at the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio; at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota; the Museum Fundació Antoni Tàpies, Barcelona; the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Museé d'art Moderne, Paris; the Künstlerhaus Stuttgart, the Kölnischer Kunstverein, Cologne; the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, and at MoMA PS1, New York. Julia Scher lives and works in Cologne.