Karen Yasinsky is an artist and filmmaker working with experimental film, animation and drawing. She teaches courses dealing with the aesthetics of film language, animation, surrealism and experimental video. She is a Guggenheim fellow and a fellow of the American Academy in Berlin and the American Academy in Rome. Her video installations and drawings have been shown in many venues internationally including the Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, P.S. 1 Contemporary Art, NY, UCLA Hammer Museum, LA, the Wexner Center, Columbus, Kunst Werke, Berlin and Museum Folkwang, Essen. Her films and videos have been screened worldwide at various venues and film festivals including Museum of Modern Art, the New York Film Festivals Views from the Avant Garde, the International Film Festival Rotterdam, Images Festival, San Francisco International, Crossroads and the Ann Arbor Film Festival (Best Sound 2013). She is also the recipient of the Baker Award.
Courses include: Intro to Visual Language; Surrealism and Film; various Animation courses; Experimental Video; Anxiety and Influence; and the film mentor for Sound and Film
Maryland Morning Screen Test film series presents Karen Yasinsky
Karen Yasinsky turned to filmmaking to surmount the limitations of painting, and the illustrated and stop-motion animations she’s created over the last decade are transfixing. They’re often set in nature, but they never feel quite natural. They center on characters who can convey with just the slightest gesture how difficult it is to truly connect with another person. “We are defined by our relationships,” Yasinsky says, “but we’re always alone.”
Maryland Morning arts and culture ace Tom Hall talked with Karen Yasinsky about her work in front of a live audience, and then screened a selection of clips from her films. Their conversation aired on Maryland Morning, Friday, January 27, 2012
Film & Media Studies Faculty Karen Yasinsky Awarded 2010-2011 Rome Prize from the American Academ