She's Making HerStory: Bonnie MacAllister

"DIY USA"

Bonnie MacAllister renders moments in multimedia: documentary

photography, abstract paintings, film, and performance. 

Her films have been featured on ClassWarKaraoke.com (UK), and her writing has been published by Paper Tiger Media (Brisbane), nth Position (UK), Grasp(Czech Republic), and Dead Drunk Dublin (Ireland). Recent

stagings of her plays were at the Philadelphia Fringe Festival, the

Shubin Theatre, and the Adrienne Theatre. She has performed at NYFA

and the Cat Cat Club in Paris. She has recently shown her visual

artwork at the Delaware Art Museum, Galeria 6 (Mexico), the Center for

Green Urbanism (DC), University of Pennsylvania, Montclair State

University (NJ), and Florissant Valley Art Gallery in St. Louis, MO.

She recently exhibited as part of Look! on Lancaster Avenue as part of

“Women of Lancaster Avenue.” She studied under Jacques Derrida, Helene

Cixous, and Agnes Varda. She is a Fulbright‐Hays recipient to Ethiopia

and a Pushcart Prize nominee.

Artist statement

Often pieces are multi-genre, fusing painting, photography, slide

installations, spoken word, video, and performance. In photographic

stills, she mimics the lighting of times past, slips shutter speeds,

and she often animates using stop action techniques culled from 35 mm

and Holga images. She is drawn to pageantry, burlesque, and motion

portraiture. She will take multiple images of an act and piece it back

together in a deconstructed film, a slide series, or gif painting. Her

documentary photographic work depicts the Coptic imagery and the women

and children whom she visited in eight cities of Ethiopia in 2009.