[1] Her installations, videotapes, performances and new media projects address the forces at work in human migration, the learning and unlearning of cultural memory, and the ever-increasing bureaucratization of experience.
Frenkel graduated with a degree in Fine Arts from McGill University in 1959, then pursued further studies in Montreal under Arthur Lismer and Albert Dumouchel.
In recent years, Frenkel has exhibited her works at Centre Culturel Canadien (Paris, 2002) and the Freud Museum (London, UK, 2003).
[5] Some examples of Frenkel's group exhibitions include the following: OKanada (Akademie der Künste, Berlin, 1982–83); Vestiges of Empire (Camden Arts Centre, London, UK, 1984); Rebel Girls: A Survey of Canadian Feminist Videotapes 1974-1988 (National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Canada, 1989);...from the Transit Bar (Documenta IX, Kassel, Germany, 1992); Shifting Paradigms (Bucharest, 1994); Beyond National Identities (Tokyo, Kyoto, and Sapporo, Japan, 1995); and Archival Dialogues: Reading the Black Star Collection (Toronto, Ontario, Canada, 2012).
It was initially exhibited in 1992 at documenta IX in Kassel, Germany, toured Europe in the 1990s and has been most recently re-exhibited at the National Gallery of Canada in the spring and summer of 2014.