Claudia Esslinger is a visual artist working in media-based installation, video projection, new media video constructs and collaborative performance. Her installations often invite interactivity using micro-controllers and sculptural components. Her single and multi-channel video projections include those appropriate for gallery exhibitions, film festivals or as components for music or dance performances. A common thematic thread through her projects is a poetic exploration of inequities and inconsistencies in both the human and natural worlds. By juxtaposing challenging and ironic elements within provocative aesthetic forms, she opens her work to a wide range of interpretation.
Esslinger's work often includes visceral props that embrace a performer or receive moving projections. From rawhide and pig intestine to rust covered divining rods, from the pulsing of mechanical bellows to a notched stick measuring drops of water, her explorations are meant to elicit visceral experiences. Natural surfaces are often bracketed by clean industrial or technical elements, such as stainless-steel mesh or high-definition displays. Viewers are invited to immerse themselves, often affecting changes in various components through their presence.
The projections of single-channel digital films are formatted to function as gallery installations or as film festival “shorts.” Multi-channel works and video loops are suited to gallery exhibition with multiple displays or projections, although single-channel versions of these are sometimes available. Collaboration with composers, writers, scientists, performers, and dancers have enhanced Esslinger's semi-narrative, semi-abstract video projects. Collaborations also have led to live control of video (using interactive software) or to screenings during live performances. These presentations have taken place internationally from Seoul to Berlin.
Esslinger has been the recipient of seven Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Awards and a New Forms Regional Grant (NEA). Artist’s residencies include the Omora Ethnobotanical Preserve near Cape Horn (2009), Headlands Center for the Arts in Sausalito, California (2007), Singing Pictures workshop in Seoul, South Korea (2000) and the Grafikwerkstaadt in Dresden, Germany (1999).
As Professor of Art at Kenyon College, Esslinger has taught courses in Digital Imaging, Experimental Film and Video, Stop-Motion Animation, Installation Art and Advanced Studio.
Esslinger's work often includes visceral props that embrace a performer or receive moving projections. From rawhide and pig intestine to rust covered divining rods, from the pulsing of mechanical bellows to a notched stick measuring drops of water, her explorations are meant to elicit visceral experiences. Natural surfaces are often bracketed by clean industrial or technical elements, such as stainless-steel mesh or high-definition displays. Viewers are invited to immerse themselves, often affecting changes in various components through their presence.
The projections of single-channel digital films are formatted to function as gallery installations or as film festival “shorts.” Multi-channel works and video loops are suited to gallery exhibition with multiple displays or projections, although single-channel versions of these are sometimes available. Collaboration with composers, writers, scientists, performers, and dancers have enhanced Esslinger's semi-narrative, semi-abstract video projects. Collaborations also have led to live control of video (using interactive software) or to screenings during live performances. These presentations have taken place internationally from Seoul to Berlin.
Esslinger has been the recipient of seven Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Awards and a New Forms Regional Grant (NEA). Artist’s residencies include the Omora Ethnobotanical Preserve near Cape Horn (2009), Headlands Center for the Arts in Sausalito, California (2007), Singing Pictures workshop in Seoul, South Korea (2000) and the Grafikwerkstaadt in Dresden, Germany (1999).
As Professor of Art at Kenyon College, Esslinger has taught courses in Digital Imaging, Experimental Film and Video, Stop-Motion Animation, Installation Art and Advanced Studio.
SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2025 Solo Exhibition at the Southern Museum, Portsmouth Ohio (in planning)
2024 Passages: Tales of the (Snow) Migrant at the College of Wooster Art Museum
2023. The (Snow) Migrant at the Gund Gallery, Gambier Ohio
2022 Specimens and Reflections (with Royal Rhodes) at the Schnormeier Gallery, Mt. Vernon Ohio
and Fairfield University, Fairfield Connecticut
2019 Distant Tracings, the experimental films of Claudia Esslinger at the Mini-Micro Cinema, Cincinnati Ohio
2017 Distant Tracings//Tracing Distance, (with Tom Giblin)
Depree Gallery, Hope College Holland, MI
Merwin Gallery, Illinois Wesleyan University, Bloomington, IL
2015 Mediation, (with Tom Giblin) Peeler Visual Art Gallery, DePauw University, Greencastle, IN
2015 Host, (with Tom Giblin) Buchwald Wright Gallery, Gund Gallery, Gambier, OH
2014 Connectivity: Technology and the Natural World, (with Tom Giblin)
Eric Dean Gallery, Wabash College, Crawfordsville, IN
2013 Double Vision Pearl Conard Gallery, OSU, Mansfield Ohio (collaboration with Tom Giblin)
2011 La Medida at the Alice F. and Harris K. Weston Art Gallery
in the Aronoff Center for the Arts, Cincinnati, OH
2007-09 The Synergy Project, SUNY Fredonia, NY
I.D.E.A. space at Colorado College, Colorado Springs, CO
Olin Art Gallery, Gambier OH
2004 Texture Mapping II at Greenville College, IN
2003 Breathing Room, McDonough Museum, Youngstown State University, Youngstown, OH
Reinvention, Allegheny State College, Pennsylvania
2002 Texture Mapping II at the Center for Visual Arts, University of Toledo
Bar-e-ers, Myers School of Art, University of Akron
2001 Still/Moving Images, Kenyon College, Gambier OH
2000 Projected Memories, Denison University Art Galleries, Granville, OH
Retopia, DAAP Gallery, University of Cincinnati, OH
1999 Bar-e-ers, Lynn Mayhew Gallery, Ohio Wesleyan University, Delaware, OH
1998 Civil Divination, Morgan Gallery, College of Wooster, Wooster, OH
1994 Suburban Comfort, with Carl Upchurch, SPACES gallery, Cleveland Ohio, Olin Gallery, Gambier, OH
SELECTED INVITATIONAL AND GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2024 Peculiar Beauty: Nature Examined. States of Being and Horizon series
at the Elizabeth T. Black and Foundation Galleries, Mansfield Art Center Spring 2024
2023. Move: Mobility, Migration and Belonging at the Ross Art Museum, Delaware Ohio
2021 Women in New Media, Dayton, Ohio (cancelled due to COVID)
2019 AutoUpdate, Fotofocus 2019, Cincinnati, Ohio
2019 Challenging Borders, Allegheny College, PA
2016 Currents New Media Festival, Santa Fe, NM
2016 La Medida, part of Soundscapes, Dubuque Museum of Art, Dubuque, IA
2013 ImageOhio13, Juror Bill Horrigan, ROY G. BIV, Shot Tower Gallery, Columbus, OH
2012 Time and Place, Standenhaus Gallery, Dresden and Urban Space, Columbus,OH
2012 Altered Ground, Ann Arbor, Michigan
2010 55º54'59" S Museo de Magallanes, Punta Arenas, Chile, University of North Texas
2010 Spreading the Influence, artists influenced by other artists at Olin Gallery, Gambier OH
2009 Heavenly Day, inaugural exhibition at the Schnormeir Gallery, Mt. Vernon, OH
2008 SPACES 30th Anniversary Exhibition, SPACES gallery, Cleveland OH
2007 Open Studio Exhibition at the Headlands Center for the Arts, Sausalito, CA
2005 Absent/Present in Ideas into Objects: Reinterpreting the Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci,
Weston Gallery, Aranoff Center for the Arts, Cincinnati OH, curator Kip Eagan
2004 Foreign Affairs: The Dresden Ohio Residency Exchange,
Cleveland State University and Otterbein College, Columbus, OH
2003-04 Ohio Dresden Exchange: artists prints at Zygote Press, Cleveland,OH
2003 Convergence, Juror Dennis Harrington, College of Wooster Art Museum, Wooster, OH
2002-03 Connections: Ohio Artists Abroad, traveling exhibition
Riffe Center, Columbus OH, April-July 2002
SPACES gallery, Cleveland, OH, Sept-Oct. 2002
Weston Gallery, Cincinnati Nov 2002- Jan 2003
2002 Works on Paper from American and German Artists, Galerie Raskolnikof, Dresden, Germany
1999 Civil Divination, Physical Landscapes: Between Body and Mind. SPACES Gallery, Cleveland
1996 Head and Hand Sculpture of a Certain Scale, Cleveland State Univ., Cleveland, OH
FILM FESTIVALS-PRODUCTIONS
2023 The (Snow) Migrant at the Experimental Dance and Music Film Festival
2021. Solus with Julie Brodie at the movement project, Cleveland Ohio
2020 Sparrow at Minute Madness Toronto
and the Animatikon Project, Paphos, Cyprus
2019 Distant Tracings Gallery Version at Auto-Update, Foto-Focus, Cincinnati, Ohio
Distant Tracings, the experimental films of Claudia Esslinger at the Mini-Micro Cinema,
Cincinnati Ohio
Distant Tracings 3 minute film festival, Santa Barbara, California: Best Experimental Film
AltFilmFestival: Best Experimental Film, the Great Lakes Film Festival and Back to School Special
Sparrow, at the Miami International film festival, Shorts Fringe Festival, and
60 Second International film festival closing ceremony in Pakistan and Nepal,
Västerås Film Festival, Sweden.
MovingGMA, honorable mention Experimental Forum Film Festival
Vestiges, at the Rome Independent Prism Film Festival
2018 Distant Tracings at the Miloti Film Festival, Columbus, Ohio
2013 Cistern, Ohio Shorts 13, Wexner Center, Columbus, OH
2012 Frequency and Amplitude, Arete-Foundation Video Festival, Libya
2012 Frequency and Amplitude, Athens Film Festival, Athens OH
2011 Breathing Lessons in the Journal of Short Films
2007 Breathing Lessons at Athens Film and Video festival (second place award), Humboldt
Film Festival, Big Muddy Film Festival, (USA) and at Fluctuating Images, Contemporary
Media Art, Stuttgart, Germany.
2006 Breathing Lessons at Dance Flicks, Dancehouse, North Carlton, Australia, “Stranger
Than Fiction” video festival, The Lab, San Francisco, CA Curated by Nomi Talisman
2005 Subtropics Videos: Selections from the Festival Art on Film in the Subtropics
Experimental Music & Sound Art Festival, Miami, Florida
2005 Art on Film, Video Art Festival, University of Akron, Ohio
2001 Reinvention Intermedia Video Festival, Cincinnati
COLLABORATIVE PERFORMANCE
2024 Snow Migrations video for dance choreographed by Balinda Craig-Quijada at Kenyon College
2022. The (Snow) Migrant video for dance choreographed by Balinda Craig-Quijada for Mt. Holyoke
2009 Barn Dances, with Balinda Craig-Quijada at the Horn Gallery, Gambier OH
2007 Faultlines with Double Edge Dance at Ingenuity Festival, Cleveland OH
2006 OXA Costume design and construction for dance performance by Leslie Seiters
2006 Avis Urbanis at The NITLE New Music Festival and Workshop collaboration with
composer Ofer Ben-Amots, Orlando, FL
2006 NITLE sponsored performance/ workshop collaboration with composers
2004 Trapeze at Intersonazen Festival, Potsdam Germany 2008 Warburg, Germany
Texture Mapping II at Intermedia Festival, Cincinnati Ohio
Texture Mapping I at two video festivals in Berlin
2002 Texture Mapping, South East Alaskan Singing Pictures of CrossSound 2002
Collaborative video /music concert with Yungi Lee, composer
August: Juneau, Sitka and Ketchican Alaska, Chang Won Park, Conductor
September: Chicago, Illinois, Timothy Weiss, Conductor April 2003: Seoul
2002, 03 Texture Mapping II in performance at the Total Museum, Seoul, South Korea
with music from Strings II composed by Yunkyung Lee, live piano by the composer.
GRANTS, FELLOWSHIPS, RESIDENCIES
2013 Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award in Media Arts
2012-13 GLCA New Directions Grant: Double Vision with Tom Giblin
2009 GLCA New Directions Grant: “An image in fragments”
2009 Artist's Residency at the Omora Ethnobotanical Preserve, Port Williams, Southern Chile
2007 Artist's Residency, Headlands Center for the Arts, (three-months)
2006-07 Ohio Arts Council, Individual Excellence Award in Media Arts
2002-03 Ohio Arts Council, Individual Artists Fellowship in Interdisciplinary Arts
2001 Professional Development Funding from The Ohio Arts Council for study in Seoul, South
Korea with Composer Yunkyung Lee,
2000 Mellon Foundation Grant for Collaborative Teaching; Making Prints in a Digital World
1999 Dresden/ Ohio Artist Exchange Residency Fellowship
Six week residency at Grafikwerkstaadt, Dresden, Germany
2000-01 Ohio Arts Council, Individual Artists Fellowships in Interdisciplinary Arts
1996-97 Ohio Arts Council, Individual Artists Fellowship in Media
1992-93 Ohio Arts Council, Individual Artists Fellowship in Interdisciplinary Arts
1989-90 Ohio Arts Council, Individual Artists Fellowship in Visual Arts
1991-92 NEA New Forms Regional Grant
Academic Employment:
Kenyon College 1997-2024. Professor of Art
1990-97 Associate Professor of Art
1984-90 Assistant Professor of Art
Denison University 1982-84. Assistant Professor of Art
2025 Solo Exhibition at the Southern Museum, Portsmouth Ohio (in planning)
2024 Passages: Tales of the (Snow) Migrant at the College of Wooster Art Museum
2023. The (Snow) Migrant at the Gund Gallery, Gambier Ohio
2022 Specimens and Reflections (with Royal Rhodes) at the Schnormeier Gallery, Mt. Vernon Ohio
and Fairfield University, Fairfield Connecticut
2019 Distant Tracings, the experimental films of Claudia Esslinger at the Mini-Micro Cinema, Cincinnati Ohio
2017 Distant Tracings//Tracing Distance, (with Tom Giblin)
Depree Gallery, Hope College Holland, MI
Merwin Gallery, Illinois Wesleyan University, Bloomington, IL
2015 Mediation, (with Tom Giblin) Peeler Visual Art Gallery, DePauw University, Greencastle, IN
2015 Host, (with Tom Giblin) Buchwald Wright Gallery, Gund Gallery, Gambier, OH
2014 Connectivity: Technology and the Natural World, (with Tom Giblin)
Eric Dean Gallery, Wabash College, Crawfordsville, IN
2013 Double Vision Pearl Conard Gallery, OSU, Mansfield Ohio (collaboration with Tom Giblin)
2011 La Medida at the Alice F. and Harris K. Weston Art Gallery
in the Aronoff Center for the Arts, Cincinnati, OH
2007-09 The Synergy Project, SUNY Fredonia, NY
I.D.E.A. space at Colorado College, Colorado Springs, CO
Olin Art Gallery, Gambier OH
2004 Texture Mapping II at Greenville College, IN
2003 Breathing Room, McDonough Museum, Youngstown State University, Youngstown, OH
Reinvention, Allegheny State College, Pennsylvania
2002 Texture Mapping II at the Center for Visual Arts, University of Toledo
Bar-e-ers, Myers School of Art, University of Akron
2001 Still/Moving Images, Kenyon College, Gambier OH
2000 Projected Memories, Denison University Art Galleries, Granville, OH
Retopia, DAAP Gallery, University of Cincinnati, OH
1999 Bar-e-ers, Lynn Mayhew Gallery, Ohio Wesleyan University, Delaware, OH
1998 Civil Divination, Morgan Gallery, College of Wooster, Wooster, OH
1994 Suburban Comfort, with Carl Upchurch, SPACES gallery, Cleveland Ohio, Olin Gallery, Gambier, OH
SELECTED INVITATIONAL AND GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2024 Peculiar Beauty: Nature Examined. States of Being and Horizon series
at the Elizabeth T. Black and Foundation Galleries, Mansfield Art Center Spring 2024
2023. Move: Mobility, Migration and Belonging at the Ross Art Museum, Delaware Ohio
2021 Women in New Media, Dayton, Ohio (cancelled due to COVID)
2019 AutoUpdate, Fotofocus 2019, Cincinnati, Ohio
2019 Challenging Borders, Allegheny College, PA
2016 Currents New Media Festival, Santa Fe, NM
2016 La Medida, part of Soundscapes, Dubuque Museum of Art, Dubuque, IA
2013 ImageOhio13, Juror Bill Horrigan, ROY G. BIV, Shot Tower Gallery, Columbus, OH
2012 Time and Place, Standenhaus Gallery, Dresden and Urban Space, Columbus,OH
2012 Altered Ground, Ann Arbor, Michigan
2010 55º54'59" S Museo de Magallanes, Punta Arenas, Chile, University of North Texas
2010 Spreading the Influence, artists influenced by other artists at Olin Gallery, Gambier OH
2009 Heavenly Day, inaugural exhibition at the Schnormeir Gallery, Mt. Vernon, OH
2008 SPACES 30th Anniversary Exhibition, SPACES gallery, Cleveland OH
2007 Open Studio Exhibition at the Headlands Center for the Arts, Sausalito, CA
2005 Absent/Present in Ideas into Objects: Reinterpreting the Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci,
Weston Gallery, Aranoff Center for the Arts, Cincinnati OH, curator Kip Eagan
2004 Foreign Affairs: The Dresden Ohio Residency Exchange,
Cleveland State University and Otterbein College, Columbus, OH
2003-04 Ohio Dresden Exchange: artists prints at Zygote Press, Cleveland,OH
2003 Convergence, Juror Dennis Harrington, College of Wooster Art Museum, Wooster, OH
2002-03 Connections: Ohio Artists Abroad, traveling exhibition
Riffe Center, Columbus OH, April-July 2002
SPACES gallery, Cleveland, OH, Sept-Oct. 2002
Weston Gallery, Cincinnati Nov 2002- Jan 2003
2002 Works on Paper from American and German Artists, Galerie Raskolnikof, Dresden, Germany
1999 Civil Divination, Physical Landscapes: Between Body and Mind. SPACES Gallery, Cleveland
1996 Head and Hand Sculpture of a Certain Scale, Cleveland State Univ., Cleveland, OH
FILM FESTIVALS-PRODUCTIONS
2023 The (Snow) Migrant at the Experimental Dance and Music Film Festival
2021. Solus with Julie Brodie at the movement project, Cleveland Ohio
2020 Sparrow at Minute Madness Toronto
and the Animatikon Project, Paphos, Cyprus
2019 Distant Tracings Gallery Version at Auto-Update, Foto-Focus, Cincinnati, Ohio
Distant Tracings, the experimental films of Claudia Esslinger at the Mini-Micro Cinema,
Cincinnati Ohio
Distant Tracings 3 minute film festival, Santa Barbara, California: Best Experimental Film
AltFilmFestival: Best Experimental Film, the Great Lakes Film Festival and Back to School Special
Sparrow, at the Miami International film festival, Shorts Fringe Festival, and
60 Second International film festival closing ceremony in Pakistan and Nepal,
Västerås Film Festival, Sweden.
MovingGMA, honorable mention Experimental Forum Film Festival
Vestiges, at the Rome Independent Prism Film Festival
2018 Distant Tracings at the Miloti Film Festival, Columbus, Ohio
2013 Cistern, Ohio Shorts 13, Wexner Center, Columbus, OH
2012 Frequency and Amplitude, Arete-Foundation Video Festival, Libya
2012 Frequency and Amplitude, Athens Film Festival, Athens OH
2011 Breathing Lessons in the Journal of Short Films
2007 Breathing Lessons at Athens Film and Video festival (second place award), Humboldt
Film Festival, Big Muddy Film Festival, (USA) and at Fluctuating Images, Contemporary
Media Art, Stuttgart, Germany.
2006 Breathing Lessons at Dance Flicks, Dancehouse, North Carlton, Australia, “Stranger
Than Fiction” video festival, The Lab, San Francisco, CA Curated by Nomi Talisman
2005 Subtropics Videos: Selections from the Festival Art on Film in the Subtropics
Experimental Music & Sound Art Festival, Miami, Florida
2005 Art on Film, Video Art Festival, University of Akron, Ohio
2001 Reinvention Intermedia Video Festival, Cincinnati
COLLABORATIVE PERFORMANCE
2024 Snow Migrations video for dance choreographed by Balinda Craig-Quijada at Kenyon College
2022. The (Snow) Migrant video for dance choreographed by Balinda Craig-Quijada for Mt. Holyoke
2009 Barn Dances, with Balinda Craig-Quijada at the Horn Gallery, Gambier OH
2007 Faultlines with Double Edge Dance at Ingenuity Festival, Cleveland OH
2006 OXA Costume design and construction for dance performance by Leslie Seiters
2006 Avis Urbanis at The NITLE New Music Festival and Workshop collaboration with
composer Ofer Ben-Amots, Orlando, FL
2006 NITLE sponsored performance/ workshop collaboration with composers
2004 Trapeze at Intersonazen Festival, Potsdam Germany 2008 Warburg, Germany
Texture Mapping II at Intermedia Festival, Cincinnati Ohio
Texture Mapping I at two video festivals in Berlin
2002 Texture Mapping, South East Alaskan Singing Pictures of CrossSound 2002
Collaborative video /music concert with Yungi Lee, composer
August: Juneau, Sitka and Ketchican Alaska, Chang Won Park, Conductor
September: Chicago, Illinois, Timothy Weiss, Conductor April 2003: Seoul
2002, 03 Texture Mapping II in performance at the Total Museum, Seoul, South Korea
with music from Strings II composed by Yunkyung Lee, live piano by the composer.
GRANTS, FELLOWSHIPS, RESIDENCIES
2013 Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award in Media Arts
2012-13 GLCA New Directions Grant: Double Vision with Tom Giblin
2009 GLCA New Directions Grant: “An image in fragments”
2009 Artist's Residency at the Omora Ethnobotanical Preserve, Port Williams, Southern Chile
2007 Artist's Residency, Headlands Center for the Arts, (three-months)
2006-07 Ohio Arts Council, Individual Excellence Award in Media Arts
2002-03 Ohio Arts Council, Individual Artists Fellowship in Interdisciplinary Arts
2001 Professional Development Funding from The Ohio Arts Council for study in Seoul, South
Korea with Composer Yunkyung Lee,
2000 Mellon Foundation Grant for Collaborative Teaching; Making Prints in a Digital World
1999 Dresden/ Ohio Artist Exchange Residency Fellowship
Six week residency at Grafikwerkstaadt, Dresden, Germany
2000-01 Ohio Arts Council, Individual Artists Fellowships in Interdisciplinary Arts
1996-97 Ohio Arts Council, Individual Artists Fellowship in Media
1992-93 Ohio Arts Council, Individual Artists Fellowship in Interdisciplinary Arts
1989-90 Ohio Arts Council, Individual Artists Fellowship in Visual Arts
1991-92 NEA New Forms Regional Grant
Academic Employment:
Kenyon College 1997-2024. Professor of Art
1990-97 Associate Professor of Art
1984-90 Assistant Professor of Art
Denison University 1982-84. Assistant Professor of Art