Diana Thater and

her visual art Made by

Lina Nikolaienko
II year, Faculty of Foreign Languages
6.0356 group
Diana Thater, who was
born in 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.
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.
In her works she explores the
temporal qualities of video
and film while literally
expanding it into space. She’s
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).
knots + surfaces (2001)

Colorvision Green/Magenta (2016)
Colorvision Blue/Yellow (2016)
The Starry Messenger (2014)
From looking at her art
installations, we can see
that the main part of her
every work it’s not only the
themed images which she
wants to show us, it’s also
the colors: mostly she uses
blue, red, yellow, green and
pink. The colors that can
set people in the specific
mood and even speak for
itself, depending on what
the theme of the
installation was.

Life is a Time-Based Medium (2015)
Horus (2008)
A Runaway World (2017)
As Radical as Reality (2016)
In some of her works she
have used the colors and
the lighting from the real
photos: Life is a Time-
Based Medium (2015)
and Horus (2008).
Sometimes she combines
the natural colors with
the background lighting
in her usual preferable
spectrum (pink and
green), for example in the
works such as As Radical
as Reality (2016), A
Runaway World (2017)

A Runaway World (2017)
As Radical as Reality (2016)
Time Compressed (2017)
Thater’s primary interest
lies in exploring the
relationship between
humans and the natural
world and the distinctions
between untouched and
manipulated nature. She
provides a window onto
animal subjectivity through
her use of atypical camera
angles, dramatic shifts in
scale, and colored lights
that alter the spectrum of
her exhibitions.

gorillagorillagorilla
Solo show, Kunsthaus Graz,
Graz, Austria
Jan 31 - May 17, 2009
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) and in many
others.
Her numerous group exhibitions
include the Whitney Biennial
(2006, 1997, 1995) and the
Carnegie International (1999).
 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.

Dolphin (1999)
 Her last two exhibitions
from this current year
took place at the Group
David Zwirner: 25 Years
Show, New York (Jan 13 –
Mar 17, 2018), which is
called David Zwirner: 25
years and at MIT List
Visual Arts Center,
David Zwirner: 25 Years
Cambridge, Massachusetts
(Feb 8 – Apr 15, 2018)
which was presented
under the name Before
Projection: Video Sculpture
1974-1995.

Before Projection: Video Sculpture 1974-1995

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.
The reason why I chose this particular artist is due
to the fact that the portraiture of her installations
and what spectrum of colors she uses in her works
mesmerized me in a way she combined them with
the space around. Walking through such
installations usually makes me feel like a part of the
installation. Also the way some of her works are
playing with my mind (like Colorvision
Blue/Yellow/Green etc.) making me think and look
at the pictures from a different perspective.