Stanya Kahn


Stanya Kahn is an American artist. She graduated magna cum laude from San Francisco State University and received an MFA in 2003 from the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College. Kahn lives and works in Los Angeles, California.

Artwork

Kahn was a 2012 Guggenheim Fellow in Film/Video. She was a contributing writer and actor in the feature film By Hook or By Crook.

Films and videos

Kahn has made two feature films and multiple shorts and animations, including:
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: