Petra Cortright

Petra Cortright, born in 1986, is an American artist known for her webcam videos and digital paintings. She attended California College of the Arts in San Francisco before completing a degree in Fine Arts at Parsons School of Design in New York in 2008. While still a student, she began sharing videos online and became involved in a community of artists experimenting with the internet as an artistic medium. She has collaborated with fashion designer Stella McCartney on a series of video projects and has created public commissions for organizations including Times Square Arts and Art on theMART. 

Cortright's work draws from imagery encountered online and from observations of the world around her. Her early webcam videos used consumer software and built-in visual effects to examine how people present themselves online and how images move across digital platforms. Shared through websites such as YouTube, these works reached audiences outside traditional exhibition spaces and became part of a broader online culture of participation and exchange. In the early 2010s, digital painting became a central focus of her practice. Working primarily in Photoshop, she creates digital paintings from images gathered online. Many works begin as large digital files composed of hundreds of layers that are continually modified over time. Cortright refers to these evolving files as "mother files," which are later printed onto aluminum, linen, paper, and acrylic. Through these works, she explores how computers and online platforms have changed the creation and circulation of images. 

Recognition of Cortright's work has led to exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, the New Museum, MCA Chicago, Whitechapel Gallery, the Walker Art Center, Palm Springs Art Museum, the Venice Biennale, Frieze London, and Art Basel. Her work is held in the collections of major institutions including the Museum of Modern Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Hammer Museum, the Pérez Art Museum Miami, and Moderna Museet. In 2015, Rhizome honored Cortright with its Future-Proof Award.