Dani Leventhal Restack

Please note that Dani Leventhal is in the process of changing her name to Dani Restack; during this transition period you can find her listed on vdb.org under the name Dani Leventhal Restack. A note from Dani: "I am in the process of changing my name from Dani Leventhal to Dani Restack.  In a gesture towards new family structure and self-creation of history, my partner Sheila and I have recently changed our names."

Dani Leventhal Restack is an assistant professor of drawing at the Ohio State University. In 2003 she received an MFA in studio arts from the University of Illinois at Chicago and, in 2009, an MFA in film/video from Bard College. She has screened her single-channel videos at the Rotterdam International Film Festival, Gene Siskel Film Center, MoMA PS1, Cine Cycle, Chicago Underground Film Festival, Union Docs, Views from the Avant-Garde and Anthology Film Archives. Leventhal Restack has been the recipient of the Wexner Center Film/Video Residency, the Milton Avery Fine Arts Award, and the Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice Visual Arts Grant. Her drawings are in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art and Yale University.

Leventhal Restack on her own work:

• I start with a subject that I care deeply about.

• I concentrate on fear, desire, anger, confusion, and love.

• I concentrate on the emotional relationships between humans, humans and animals, and humans and their environments.

• I am particularly interested in the way we develop based on our experiences in childhood, and then the process of undoing it.

The work takes multiple forms and encompasses a broad range of themes, ranging from the explicitly political to the mundane and domestic.

The use of montage has been consistent. I complicate and make meaning in editing. I cut two shots together that will provide a third meaning or I lay things side by side according to sound, form, or color. The camera becomes an extension of my body and a means of making experiences material. The images I collect work together according to an emotional logic.

I show my reality but I don't consider my work diaristic because I am using the camera for understanding the world rather than simply recording it. Also I don't consider myself unique -- which means using my experience can reflect the viewer’s experience.

Winner of the Kazuko Trust Award 2013, presented by the Kazuko Trust and the Film Society of the Lincoln Center in recognition for her excellence with experimental work.