Biography
Artwork © Ricardo Napoles, Mimi Pantuhova
Donna Bassin is a photo-based artist, filmmaker, trauma psychologist, professor, and published author born in Brooklyn and now living in New Jersey. The death of her younger sister when she was ten years, and her family’s difficulty mourning have motivated and shaped her clinical and art practice. Her long-term projects respond to the grave injuries and losses of contemporary life, such as the aftermath of September 11, coming home after the war, racism, social injustice, and, most recently, the destruction of the environment. Those pursuits have resulted in two award-winning documentaries, two solo museum exhibitions, publications in various art and culture periodicals, public installations, book covers, inclusion in private and museum collections, a billboard in Brooklyn, and participation with other artists in curated group shows.
The Afterlife of Dolls, a solo exhibition at Montclair Art Museum, was featured on PBS' State of the Arts. FLOAT Magazine, LandEscape Art Review, Tricycle, Fotonostrum, Grazia, and Lens Magazine have published her work. Her photo-based installations have appeared at the Jamestown Arts Center, Smack Mellon, Mills Reservation, Jersey City, and the Montclair Art Museum. She received the 2021 New Jersey Council on the Arts Fellowship in Photography, was honored as a Showcase artist for Art Fair 14C in Jersey City, and was recently chosen as one of the top 50 photographers for Critical Mass 2022.
Her portrait series, My Own Witness: Rupture and Repair, is currently on view as a solo exhibit at the Espaço D’Artes Gallery with an accompanying catalog by the Incubator Photo Gallery in Lisbon, Portugal, and was recently shown at the Hunterdon Art Museum, Arc Gallery & Educational Foundation, and Passaic County Arts Center. Environmental Melancholia, her latest series, was featured in Photolucida’s Imminent Existence at the Photographic Center Northwest for the Critical Mass Top 50.