Talena Sanders
I am a filmmaker and interdisciplinary artist exploring relationships between personal identity, visual and material culture, dress and adornment, spiritual practice, and geographic place. Often examining individuals' senses of self in the context of organized religions and other affinity groups, I am interested in how social structures affect the tension between individual and collective senses of identity.

I am invested in the potential for communicating experience through synthesizing experimental and documentary forms in moving image.

I also incorporate documentary and experimental ethnographic approaches to examine themes of identity production through intermedia installation and performance, photography, performance, and relational aesthetics.

A proud Kentuckian, I received a BFA in Art Studio with a focus in New Media from the University of Kentucky. I'm currently working toward an MFA in Experimental and Documentary Arts at Duke University. My work has been exhibited and collected internationally, from very serious arts institutions to the basements and highway motels of America. Here are a few of the places who have kindly shown my work: New York Film Festival Views from the Avant-Garde, Crossroads at San Francisco Cinematheque, Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art in Winston-Salem, NC, Lódz Culture House's Galeria Imaginarium in Lódz, Poland, Chelsea Museum of Art in New York, NY, Aljira Center for Contemporary Art in Newark, NJ, Huntington Museum of Art in Huntington, WV, Above Second gallery in Hong Kong, International Forum Art Tech Media in Cordoba, Spain, International Streaming Festival in The Hague, The Netherlands, Contemporary Art Center in Naples, Italy, Musée de l'Elysée in Lausanne, Switzerland.

This website will probably always be under construction.
Some videos password protected, please email the address on the contact page for access.

Front page still from Liahona (2013).