Kelly Gallagher, assistant professor of film in the College of Visual and Performing Arts’ Department of Transmedia, has received a 2019-20 Artist Residency Award from the Wexner Center for the Arts, the multidisciplinary contemporary art laboratory at The Ohio State University.
Gallagher is one of 20 filmmakers who has been commissioned by the Wexner Center to create a short film in in response to the current, often turbulent sociopolitical climate, a reflection on or reaction to the zeitgeist as the artist perceives and defines it. The commissions were inspired by the 1968 Cinétracts project, when a group of French filmmakers crafted short, quickly-made cinematic responses to the political and social upheaval that shook Paris in May of that year. The Wexner will screen the new works in fall 2020.
Gallagher’s experimental films, documentaries, and animations explore histories and movements of resistance. She recently had a solo screening of her works in Montreal, Canada, and presented her first European solo screening, “I am the mace,” comprising ten years of her moving image work across animation, live action and avant-garde collage, at Close-Up Film Centre in London. Her work has also screened internationally at such venues as the Museum of Modern Art, the National Gallery of Art, Sundance Film Festival, the Smithsonian Institution, Ann Arbor Film Festival, Sheffield Doc/Fest, the Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry and Black Maria Film Festival.