Stanya Kahn (born 1968) is an American artist. She graduated magna cum laude from

San Francisco State University San Francisco State University (commonly referred to as San Francisco State, SF State and SFSU) is a public research university in San Francisco. As part of the 23-campus California State University system, the university offers 118 different b ...

and received an MFA in 2003 from the

Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts is a graduate program associated with Bard College that grants Master of Fine Arts degrees. Founded in 1981, Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts (otherwise known as the Bard MFA program) is a nontraditi ...

Bard College Bard College is a private college, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. The campus overlooks the Hudson River and Catskill Mountains, and is within the Hudson River Historic ...

. Kahn lives and works in Los Angeles, California.

Artwork

Exhibitions

Select solo exhibitions include shows at Institute for Contemporary Art/Los Angeles, The Wexner Center for the Arts, MoMA/PS1,

New Museum The New Museum of Contemporary Art, founded in 1977 by Marcia Tucker, is a museum in New York City at 235 Bowery, on Manhattan's Lower East Side. History The museum originally opened in a space in the Graduate Center of the then-named New Sc ...

/NY, British Film Institute/London Film Festival,

Rotterdam International Film Festival The International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) is an annual film festival held at the end of January in various locations in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Since its foundation in 1972, it has maintained a focus on independent and experimental fi ...

, Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects, Marlborough Chelsea/NY, Weiss Berlin, The Pit/LA,

Cornerhouse Cornerhouse was a centre for cinema and the contemporary visual arts, located next to Oxford Road Station on Oxford Street, Manchester, England, which was active from 1985–2015. It had three floors of art galleries, three cinemas, a booksho ...

/Manchester, UK. Select group exhibitions include Wesleyan Art Gallery, the

Walker Art Center The Walker Art Center is a multidisciplinary contemporary art center in the Lowry Hill neighborhood of Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. The Walker is one of the most-visited modern and contemporary art museums in the United States and, t ...

CAM Calmodulin (CaM) (an abbreviation for calcium-modulated protein) is a multifunctional intermediate calcium-binding messenger protein expressed in all eukaryotic cells. It is an intracellular target of the secondary messenger Ca2+, and the bind ...

/St. Louis, the Gwangju Biennial (’18),

Hammer Museum The Hammer Museum, which is affiliated with the University of California, Los Angeles, is an art museum and cultural center known for its artist-centric and progressive array of exhibitions and public programs. Founded in 1990 by the entrepreneur- ...

, MOCA/SD, Astrup Fearnely /Norway, Transmediale, The California Biennial (’10). Her collaborative work with Harry Dodge has shown at Elizabeth Dee Gallery/NY, the

Whitney Biennial The Whitney Biennial is a biennial exhibition of contemporary American art, typically by young and lesser known artists, on display at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City, United States. The event began as an annual exhibition in ...

(08),

Sundance Film Festival The Sundance Film Festival (formerly Utah/US Film Festival, then US Film and Video Festival) is an annual film festival organized by the Sundance Institute. It is the largest independent film festival in the United States, with more than 46,66 ...

, MOCA/LA,

MoMA Moma may refer to: People * Moma Clarke (1869–1958), British journalist * Moma Marković (1912–1992), Serbian politician * Momčilo Rajin (born 1954), Serbian art and music critic, theorist and historian, artist and publisher Places ; Ang ...

/NY,

ZKM The ZKM , Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe (until March 2016: ZKM Center for Art and Media Technology), a cultural institution, was founded in 1989. and since 1997 is located in a listed industrial building in Karlsruhe, Germany, a former muni ...

/Karlsrüh, among others. Kahn was a 2012

Guggenheim Fellow Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the ar ...

in Film/Video. She was a contributing writer and actor in the feature film

By Hook or By Crook "By hook or by crook" is an English phrase meaning " by any means necessary", suggesting that any means possible should be taken to accomplish a goal. The phrase was first recorded in the Middle English ''Controversial Tracts'' of John Wyclif in ...

Films and videos

Kahn has made two feature films and multiple shorts and animations, including: * 2020 No Go Backs (33 min short, 16mm transferred to 2K) * 2011-2017 Stand in the Stream (60 min feature, HD video) * 2014 Don’t Go Back to Sleep (74 min feature, HD video) * 2012 Happy Song for You (5 min short, HD video) * 2010 It’s Cool, I’m Good (35 min short, SD video)

Early work

From 1988 to 1999 Kahn made multidisciplinary performance works, both solo and collaborative, in San Francisco, New York, and touring nationally and internationally.

Collaborations with Harry Dodge

In the early 1990s, Kahn met Harry Dodge, a video artist. The two began collaborating in the late 1990's on performance and on the film By Hook or By Crook and continued making short videos until 2008, co-writing, directing and editing. Kahn improvised most of the language in the videos while Dodge often operated the camera. Their comedic videos satirize the awkwardness of artmaking, video, and gender. Beyond their humor, Kahn and Dodge's videos touch upon the darker seriousness of trauma, privilege, and politics. Among several other museums and events, Kahn and Dodge's work has been shown in numerous venues nationally and internationally, including: * The 2008

* The 2010 California Biennial at the Orange County Museum of Art *

Getty Center The Getty Center, in Los Angeles, California, is a campus of the Getty Museum and other programs of the Getty Trust. The $1.3 billion center opened to the public on December 16, 1997 and is well known for its architecture, gardens, and views over ...

, Los Angeles *

, Los Angeles * The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles *

The Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of the ...

, New York *

, Utah

Achievements

* 2012 –

John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation was founded in 1925 by Olga and Simon Guggenheim in memory of their son, who died on April 26, 1922. The organization awards Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been ...

Fellowship * 2012 –

Jury Prize A jury is a sworn body of people (jurors) convened to hear evidence and render an impartial verdict (a finding of fact on a question) officially submitted to them by a court, or to set a penalty or judgment. Juries developed in England durin ...

: Best Short, Narrative Fiction, Migrating Forms Film Festival * 2013 – Artadia Award, Los Angeles * 2014 CCI Investing in Artists Grant * 2015 –

San Francisco Art Institute San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI) was a private college of contemporary art in San Francisco, California. Founded in 1871, SFAI was one of the oldest art schools in the United States and the oldest west of the Mississippi River. Approximately ...

Artist-in-Residence * 2017 Acts of Life Residency, Singapore and Manila, NTU CCA & Goethe Institute * 2017 Herb Alpert Award nomination (two categories: visual art and film/video) * 2018 Herb Alpert Award nomination (film/video) * 2018 MacDowell Residency * 2020

Anonymous Was a Woman "Anonymous Was a Woman" is the fourth episode of the eleventh season of the American police procedural drama '' NCIS'', and the 238th episode overall. It originally aired on CBS in the United States on October 15, 2013. The episode is written ...

nomination * 2020 Herb Alpert nomination (film/video)

References

External links

Stanya Kahn’s website

Vielmetter Los Angeles' page

All Together Now Vimeo