Danièle Wilmouth headshot

Danièle Wilmouth

Film, Video & Installation Artist
2017 Make a Wave
Visual Arts

Danièle Wilmouth is fascinated by the unconscious choreography of ordinary life and how cinema can reveal the miraculous spectacle of the everyday. She creates hybrid forms of film, video, installation, and live art that explore ritual, pattern, monotony, and impermanence. Her work investigates mediation of the choreographed body—constructing performances exclusively for the camera, as well as experimental approaches to social issue documentary. Collaboration is essential to her work, and she has been fortunate to work with gifted dancers, musicians, circus acrobats, and performance artists. She studied filmmaking, new media and performance at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Carnegie Mellon University, and Tyler School of Art. In 1990 she began a six-year residency in Japan, where she researched post-war Japanese artistic collectives, studied Butoh dance, and co-founded Hairless Films, a multi-national independent filmmaking collective.

​Wilmouth's works have been exhibited at a variety of venues and film festivals around the globe. Recently, a collection of her short films was included in the 2023 Chiayi International Art Documentary Film Festival in Taiwan. She was a featured ‘Artist in Focus’ at the 2022 Jumping Frames Hong Kong International Movement-Image Festival, as well as the 2016 BODY+ACT exhibition at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Seoul, South Korea. In 2013, she was featured in Dance Films Association’s ‘Meet the Artist Series’ with a solo show at the Film Society of Lincoln Center. Retrospectives of Wilmouth's works have been held in Russia (2004, St. Petersburg International Dance Film Festival), and South Korea (2012, EXiS Film Festival, Korean Film Archives, Seoul).

Danièle Wilmouth teaches Film, Video, New Media and Performance at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

 

 

Featured Artworks

  •  Three color photos of dancers. One dancer is covered with red clothes pins from head to toe. Tracing a Vein Photos by Mayumi Lake

    Experimental Dance Film, 16mm, 15 minutes, 2001. Combining live action and stop motion cinematography with Japanese Butoh dance, ‘Tracing a Vein’ is an ecstatic ceremonial dance for performers and camera. Drawing on a range of mythology and folklore, 'Tracing a Vein' attempts to re-appropriate the spiritual power of ancient performance - to rediscover the performer as priest, warrior and healer.

  •  Film poster and two photos of dancers in black white and color. Curtain of Eyes Photos by Kazuya Tachikawa

    Experimental Dance Film, 16mm black & white, 13 minutes, 1997. Japanese Butoh dance merges with psychological imagery to explore intimacy and bi-cultural identity.

  •  A red black and yellow film poster and two photos of musicians with instruments. FANFARE for MARCHING BAND Photos by Sanghoon Lee

    Experimental Music & Dance Film, Super 16mm finished on HD, 16 minutes, 2012. A collaboration with the band Mucca Pazza & choreographer Peter Carpenter. Referencing depression era musicals, FANFARE for MARCHING BAND follows a ragtag musical militia, as they stage 'musical actions for joy' at inappropriate locations around the city of Chicago during lean economic times.

  •  Film poster and two photos of Eleanore and Ronnie, and an old fashioned lamp. Eleanore & the Timekeeper Photos by Danièle Wilmouth

    Documentary, 16mm film finished on HD, 76 minutes, 2010. The complexities of a mother’s sacrifice are discovered, when Eleanore and her intellectually disabled son Ronnie face separation and life transformation after 64 years of companionship and daily ritual in their Pennsylvania farmhouse.

  •  Three photos of a circus performance scene. A Heretic's Primer on Love & Exertion Photos by Joseph Ravens & ChiJang Yin

    Experimental Performance Film, 16mm finished on Video, 24 minutes, 2007. A collaboration with the performance duo Morganville. Pilfering from the traditions of vaudeville, dance and performance art, Trevor Martin and Kym Olsen slip from monologue to dance, trousers to dresses, female to male, in a collection of 29 related incidents.

Danièle Wilmouth has crowd-funded a project with 3AP

  • I'm Fine

    • $5,000 raised of $5,000 goal
    • 0 Days 0:00:00 LEFT
      • 3Arts matched
      • 100% funded
      • 0% to go

    For years I’ve been making experimental films with deeply personal themes, as well as intimate social issue documentaries. In 2017, I began a new project addressing some mid-life existential questions in collaboration with dancer/choreographer Peter Carpenter. Through the lens of …

    Read more about I'm Fine