Elke Lehmann's interactive installation, Back Talk, features a mounted, stuffed Macaw parrot. Its speaking device records sound bites and repeats them twice in a distorted, parrot-like manner. If addressed by one person, a "dialogue" evolves that functions more like an echo. With two or more people, the parrot serves as an intermediary. As each person talks into the parrot, it encourages a mediated interaction between people who might otherwise never dare to converse, or who would not say certain things directly to one another.

Elke Lehmann was born in 1966 in Trier, Germany and lives in New York City. Her work has been shown in France, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, Spain, Yugoslavia and the United States. She received a DAAD Fellowship in 1993 and most recently the Rema Hort Mann Foundation Art Grant.