Michelle Handelman (born August 5, 1960) is an American contemporary artist, filmmaker, and writer who works with live performance, multiscreen installation, photography and sound.

Coming up through the years of the AIDS crisis and Culture Wars, Handelman has built a body of work that explores the dark and uncomfortable spaces of queer desire.

Her parents divorced when she was ten years old, and her father moved to Los Angeles to become part of the counterculture drug scene, while her mother stayed in Chicago and remarried several times,[3] including a marriage to B.C.

Together they created several bodies of work including The Torture Series (1994), which won the Sony Visions Award in 1995, the controversial film Catscan (1990), and The Cereal Box Conspiracy Against the Developing Mind (1994) for the cult anthology Apocalypse Culture.

[8] At this time, Handelman also performed in several films by pioneering artist Lynn Hershmann Leeson produced with ZDF/Arte including Twists in the Cord (1994),[9] Virtual Love (1993), and Cut Piece (1993).

[10] She also collaborated with Eric Werner, co-founder of the industrial performance group Survival Research Laboratories and worked on Jon Moritsugu’s production Terminal USA (1994).

[17] In 2018, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art commissioned her film performance installation Hustlers & Empires,[18] and in 2020, Kino Lorber released a newly restored version of her award-winning documentary BloodSisters: Leather, Dykes & Sadomasochism (1995) for its 25 year anniversary.

[23] The film then went on to screen at over 50 festivals and venues in London, Berlin, Amsterdam, New York, Los Angeles, Melbourne – over eleven countries in all, with broadcasts on England’s Bravo TV and Channel 4, in addition to German, Italian, and Australian television.

The project draws on the stories of three real and imagined hustlers, inspired by Iceberg Slim's Pimp (1967); Marguerite Duras's The Lover (1984); and Federico Fellini's Toby Dammit (1968), opening up questions of survival and belonging, and how they intersect with issues of race, religion and gender.

It features NYC downtown performance legend John Kelly, queer activist Viva Ruiz (Thank God for Abortion) and musician Shannon Funchess (Light Asylum) who each collaborated with Handelman on original songs and monologues.

It looks at queer erasures and legacies through the resilience of intergenerational relationships, featuring trans artist and activist Zackary Drucker and drag legend Jack Doroshow aka Flawless Sabrina.

[36] The title of the piece “Beware the Lily Law” comes from code words bouncers and patrons used to identify undercover police who often infiltrated the bar.

[17] Michael Lynch also performs the monologue “Spare Some Change for a Dying Queen”, written by Jimmy Camicia in the mid-80s as an homage to Stonewall activist Marsha P. Johnson.

Collaborating with couture fetish designer Garo Sparo, Italian noise band Larsen, dark ambient composer Lustmord, and a cast of performers, the multi-screen narrative is constructed of gestures and sounds that breathe life into Baudelaire’s text such as, “No abyss compares with your bed”, and “condemned to an eternal laugh because I know not how to smile”.

Over the course of three evenings, audiences gathered in the dimly lit front space of the gallery Jack the Pelican Presents, Brooklyn, where they were invited to sit, drink, and laugh incessantly.

She has written extensively for Filmmaker Magazine, including interviews with director Kirby Dick (Sick: The Life and Death of Bob Flanagan) and Beth B (Lydia Lunch: The War is Never Over).

“The Media Conspiracy Against the Developing Mind", was co-written with Monte Cazazza and is published in the anthology Apocalypse Culture (Feral House Press, Los Angeles).