Lana Z.
Caplan

Lana Z Caplan works across media, including single-channel films or videos in essay form, interactive installations, video art and performance pieces for the camera, experimental documentaries, virtual reality experiences, public art video installations, tintypes, silver prints and photography books.

In many of her works, the technology itself – digitally generated realities, landscape referent projections, historic photo processes, internet images, multi-channel or interactive installations – is used to comment on itself and transform its subject.  Rather than trying to define a place through images, much of her work expands the meaning beyond what you see in the image through re-contextualizing the place from the lived world into the language of representation.

Caplan’s work has been recognized by awards at various exhibitions and festivals, including the Director’s Prize at Black Maria Film Festival and Audience Award at the Crossroads Film Festival in San Francisco. Other notable exhibitions and festivals include Edinburgh International Film Festival (Edinburgh, Scotland), L’Alternativa Independent Film Festival (Barcelona), Anthology Film Archives (NY, NY), Chicago Underground Film Festival, Alchemy Film Festival (Scotland), Currents New Media Festival (Santa Fe), Inside Out Art Museum (Beijing), National Gallery (San Juan, PR), Experiments in Cinema (Albuquerque), MadCat Women’s International Film Festival (San Francisco), Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporáneo, (Mexico City), Havana Film Festival. She is the recipient of several grants including from Massachusetts Cultural Council, the Puffin Foundation, and the Film/Video Studio Program Fellowship at the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus OH. Her work has been reviewed in various journals and periodicals including ARTnews, The Boston Globe, Hyperallergic, and The New York Sun. Caplan is currently an Assistant Professor of Photography and Video at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo.