Shelly Silver

Silver constructs the fictional story of a gay man who has returned to New York after fifty years to care for his dying mother. The narration of the film is an essay told from the man’s point of a view, an amalgam of research and interviews.

Silver’s art has been exhibited in venues such as the Museum of Modern Art, the International Center of Photography, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, the Yokohama Museum of Art, the Pompidou Centre, the Kyoto National Museum, the Institute of Contemporary Arts, the Museo Reina Sofia, and the London, Singapore, New York, Moscow, and Berlin film festivals. Her work has been broadcast on BBC/England, PBS/USA, Arte, Planete/Europe, RTÉ/Ireland, SWR/Germany, and Atenor/Spain.

Silver uses a mixture of fiction, documentary, and experimental genres to investigate questions of cultural identity. She experiments with perspective, exploring the power dynamics that exist between filmmakers and their subjects. Her role as a traveler and an outsider inspired the works she made abroad, such as Former East/Former West (1994) and 37 Stories About Leaving Home (1996). Her recent work centers on New York’s Chinatown.

Silver attended Cornell University, graduating in 1980 with a B.A. in Intellectual History, and a B.F.A. in Mixed Media and subsequently attended the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Studio Program. She has worked as a commercial video editor. In the 1990s, she lived in Germany, France, and Japan.

Shelly Silver (born 1957 in Brooklyn, NY) is an American artist who works with film, video, and photography. Her art has been exhibited and broadcast throughout the U.S., Europe and Asia. She is Associate Professor of Visual Arts at Columbia University School of the Arts.