Diana Thater

Exhibited in 2015, Thater's Science, Fiction is a video installation that is divided into two parts. The two parts are placed in separate rooms, but both rooms have blue hue due to the light beams attached on the floor corners. The first part consists of two monitors, facing each other, showcasing footages of planetarium from Griffith Observatory, which is located in Los Angeles. The second part consists of huge box, size of a small room, that has a projection of dung beetles above it and intense yellow light under it. The purpose behind this exhibition was to visually show the recent scientific discovery that dung beetles use starlight during night time to navigate themselves. Through her exhibition, Thater commented on impact of light pollution on wildlife.

First exhibited in 2011, Thater's Chernobyl showcases multiple footages recorded in Prypiat in Chernobyl. The exhibition consists of simultaneous display of multiple footages of different locations in Prypiat. The center of the exhibition is the footage of a movie theater and all four sides of the movie theater are projected on the gallery space. Over the projection of the movie theater, the other footages, such as buildings, animals and nature, are projected as well. This exhibition is not only about showing negative human impact on nature, but to also show how life still persists even under such condition.

In 2011, Thater received an Award for Artistic Innovation from the Center for Cultural Innovation in Los Angeles. She used the grant to complete Chernobyl, a large-scale installation project which documents the post-human landscape at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant site in the Ukraine, marking the 25th anniversary of the explosion in 2011. She has been the recipient of other notable awards, including the Phelan Award in Film and Video (2006), a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship (2005), an Étant-donnés Foundation Grant (1996), and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship (1993).

Her numerous group exhibitions include the Whitney Biennial (2006, 1997, 1995) and the Carnegie International (1999).

Thater's work explores the temporal qualities of video and film while literally expanding it into space. She is best known for her site-specific installations in which she manipulates architectural space through forced interaction with projected images and tinted light, such as knots + surfaces (2001) and Delphine (1999) in the Kulturkirche St. Stephani (2009) and the Kunstmuseum Stuttgart (2010).

Since 2000, Thater has been the artist-in-residence for The Dolphin Project, a non-profit organization that protects cetaceans from slaughter, captivity, and abuse. In 2009, Diana Thater taught art at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland.

Since her first solo show in 1991, Thater has exhibited widely throughout North America and Europe, with one-person exhibitions at the Institute of Modern Art in Brisbane (2011), the Santa Monica Museum of Art (2010), Kunsthaus Graz in collaboration with London's Natural History Museum (2009), Dia Center for the Arts (2001), Vienna Secession (2000), The Museum of Modern Art (1998), MAK Center for Art and Architecture in Los Angeles (1998), the Walker Art Center (1997), the Kunsthalle Basel (1996), Salzburger Kunstverein (1996), The Renaissance Society (1995), and the Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art (1994), among many others. In March 2004, the Museum für Gegenwartskunst Siegen and the Kunsthalle Bremen in Germany opened a simultaneous two-museum survey exhibition of her work from 1993 to 2003.

Thater studied Art History at New York University and earned her BA in 1984. In 1990 she was awarded an MFA from Art Center College of Design.

Diana Thater (born May 14, 1962, in San Francisco) is an American artist, curator, writer, and educator. She has been a pioneering creator of film, video, and installation art since the early 1990s. She lives and works in Los Angeles, California.