Kirsten Leenaars

Kirsten Leenaars is an interdisciplinary video artist based in Chicago. Various forms of performance, theater, and documentary strategies make up the threads that run through her work. She engages with individuals and communities to create participatory video and performance work. Her work oscillates between fiction and documentation, reinterprets personal stories and reimagines everyday realities through shared authorship, staging, and improvisation.

Her work has been shown nationally and internationally, at venues including the Museo Universitario del Chopo, Mexico City; MAI, Montreal; Kamloops Art Gallery, Kamloops; the Broad Museum of Art MSU, East Lansing; The Haggerty Museum of Art, Milwaukee; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago; the Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam. Leenaars is the recipient of the DCASE Artist Response Grant ($1000,000), and has received grants from the Andy Warhol Foundation; The Mondrian Fund; Milwaukee Art Board, Cultural Contribution Grant Dutch Culture US, Dutch Consulate NY, amongst others.