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Generating artistic spectacle through the intersection of cinema, sculpture, theater and technology, Heidi Kumao reframes ordinary gestures to explore their psychological underside.  Her interests have manifesteGd a wide range of hybrid art forms including: a game interface which empowers users to hack live CNN broadcasts, provocative electronic clothing, electromechanical girl’s legs that “misbehave,” experimental animations, and narrative video sculptures.  Many of her works feature a minimalist theater set, a site for presenting simple actions such as writing, gardening, reading, or walking in order to call attention to these often overlooked acts. Through these animated tableaus, she demonstrates how small gestures, even the most private and poetic, can become significant acts of defiance.

Kumao has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Creative Capital Foundation, New York Foundation for the Arts, AAUW (American Assn. of University Women), the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation.  She has exhibited her work nationally and internationally including one-person exhibitions at the Museo de Arte Moderno, Buenos Aires, Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona, Arizona State University Art Museum, and Center for the Arts, Yerba Buena Gardens, San Francisco. Group exhibition venues include: ZeroOne San Jose, Museo Universtario Arte Contemporáneo in Mexico City, Wing Luke Asian Art Museum (Seattle), and the National Academy Museum in New York City. Her work has been reviewed in Artforum, ArtPapers, and Sculpture Magazine and is in a number of private and public collections including The Exploratorium,

She is an Associate Professor at the Stamps School of Art & Design at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

Photo courtesy of the artist (The Arctic Circle, 2013)