Dara Birnbaum

3rd Floor

For her book commissioned by D’Oro D’Art Project, Dara Birnbaum took on the challenge of transforming her four-channel video, Arabesque (2011) into a unique, vertically-formatted single screen. Integrating the latest in software and hardware, the highly skilled designers at D’Oro D’Art successfully created a hybrid object, which is a book, a sculpture, and a video artwork all in one.

Dara Birnbaum is a New York-based artist who is heralded for her mastery of video installation and for manipulation of television footage. She received a Bachelor of Architecture degree from Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh; a B.F.A. in Painting from the San Francisco Art Institute; and a Certificate in Video and Electronic Editing at the Video Study Center at the New School for Social Research, New York. Birnbaum's pioneering video, media, and installation work has, over the past four decades, addressed the ideological and the aesthetic characters of mass media imagery, making it fundamental to our understanding of the history of media art.

Later this year, Birnbaum will open two major survey exhibitions: the retrospective “Reaction” at the Hessel Museum at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York (25 June – 27 November 2022) and “Journey” at the Miller ICA, Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA (19 August – 13 November 2022), which will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue. Her work is currently on view in “From Moment to Movement: Picturing Protest in the Kramlich Collection” at the Manetti Shrem Museum at the University of California, Davis.

Birnbaum’s work has been widely exhibited: at MoMA PS1, New York (2019); at National Portrait Gallery, London (2018); at Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio (2018); at South London Gallery, UK (2011); at the Serralves Foundation, Porto, Portugal (2010) and S.M.A.K. Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst, Gent, Belgium (2009) for major retrospectives; at Center for Contemporary Art, CCA Kitakyushu (2009); at Museum of Modern Art, New York (2008); at Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna, Austria (2006) for a retrospective; and at The Jewish Museum, New York (2003). Her work was also exhibited at Documenta 7, 8, and 9.

In February 2017, Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Art created “The Birnbaum Award” in the artist’s honor.