Heather O'Brien | SIU

Cinema

Heather M. O'Brien is an artist, filmmaker, and writer. Her work builds encounters with familial archives, constructs of nationhood, and the illusion of accurate memory. Interests include expanded cinema, photographic histories, and the contemporary essay film.

O’Brien’s recent projects include dyad gaze, a film about longing and belonging in Beirut, Lebanon, Opia (with Jonathan Takahashi), a researched-based collaboration rooted in the familial photographic archive that reveals the inaccuracies of visual representation, and like the delayed rays of a star, an artist’s book that unpacks the post-Lebanese Civil War image landscape while confronting the complicated emotions that arise when we look intently at the place we call home.

Her work has been exhibited and presented in an array of educational institutions, museums, galleries, and conferences including San Francisco Camerawork, The University Art Galleries at UC Irvine, Sursock Museum Beirut, The Society for Photographic Education Conference, The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA Los Angeles, The American University of Beirut Art Galleries, Baxter St. at The Camera Club of New York, Beirut Art Center, KW Institute for Contemporary Art Berlin, The Photographic Center Northwest, The Western Political Science Association Conference, The Center For Photography at Woodstock, and Parsons/The New School New York. She has been awarded residencies with The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Santa Fe Art Institute, Marble House Project, Women's Studio Workshop, Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild, Sommerakademie Paul Klee, The Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning New York, and The Robert Rauschenberg Foundation. Her projects have been featured in numerous publications including The New York Times, Conveyor Magazine, Hyperallergic, Roosevelt Institute 2.0, Evergreen Review, Humble Arts Foundation, and The Los Angeles Review of Books. O’Brien has received grants from California State University Long Beach, The Women’s Center for Creative Work, and The American University of Beirut Research Board. She received an MFA from California Institute of the Arts and a fellowship from the Creative Practices Program at the International Center of Photography New York.