Stanya Kahn

Stanya Kahn studied at Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts and San Francisco State University. The recorded working language is English. Work by Stanya Kahn is recorded in the collections of Hammer Museum, Museum of Modern Art and Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Distinctions recorded are Guggenheim Fellowship and Anonymous Was A Woman Award.

• Name — Stanya Kahn • Born — 1968 • Birthplace — San Francisco, California, U.S. • Training — San Francisco State University Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College

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.

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

In the early 1990s, Kahn met Harry Dodge, a video artist. The two began collaborating in the late 1990s 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 and 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 Whitney Biennial • The 2010 California Biennial at the Orange County Museum of Art • Getty Center, Los Angeles • Hammer Museum, Los Angeles • The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles • The Museum of Modern Art, New York • Sundance Film Festival, Utah

• 2012 – John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship • 2012 – Jury Prize: Best Short, Narrative Fiction, Migrating Forms Film Festival • 2013 – Artadia Award, Los Angeles • 2014 CCI Investing in Artists Grant • 2015 – San Francisco Art Institute 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 nomination • 2020 Herb Alpert nomination (film/video) • 2023 Anonymous Was a Woman Award