Salome Chasnoff

Profile

Salome Chasnoff is a Chicago-based filmmaker, installation artist, and educator dedicated to expanding the understanding and practice of social justice.

Her work has been seen across the US and internationally in film festivals, galleries, and museums including DOX Centre for Contemporary Art, Prague; National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington DC; Slamdance Film Festival, Park City UT; Cinema Mostra AIDS, Sao Paulo; Feminist Active Documentary Video Festa, Tokyo; Frameline Film Festival, San Francisco; Creative Time’s Democracy in America; Chicago Humanities Festival; Superfest Best of the Fest, Berkeley CA; and the United Nations. Her films are also widely distributed in educational institutions. She is a Purpose Prize Fellow, a Women’s eNews Ida B. Wells Bravery in Journalism Awardee, a “21 Leaders for the 21st Century” honoree, and the recipient of a Chicago Foundation for Women Impact Award and the Illinois Humanities Council Towner Award.

Current works include Present Absence, a multichannel video installation and website that memorialize people murdered by Chicago police through interviews with their family members and close friends, exhibiting with a large-scale quilt sewn in restorative justice peace circles across the city and youth-authored responses to police violence; and Code of the Freaks, a look at Hollywood representations of disability from the perspectives of disabled artists and cultural critics.

From 2000 through 2011, Chasnoff was the founding executive director, teaching artist, and resident filmmaker at Beyondmedia Education, where she led workshops with people who are traditionally excluded from media production and representation to create self-authored videos, exhibitions, websites, and social media campaigns. As an IREX fellow, Chasnoff has also facilitated programs in online journalism and media activism with the Female Journalists Association of Liberia in Monrovia. Chasnoff has an M.A. in Theatre and Performance and a Ph.D. in Performance Studies from Northwestern University. She teaches in the Art Education department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.