Diana Thater
2025 Milestone Grantee
Since emerging in the early 1990s, artist Diana Thater has pioneered the use of film, video, light, and sound, continually challenging the boundaries of time-based media and installation. Her work explores the relationship between the natural and man-made worlds while examining the structures of mediated reality. Drawing on a wide variety of sources, including literature, animal behavior sciences, and sociology, her works directly engage their surroundings, producing an intricate relationship between time and space. Thater was born in San Francisco and studied Art History at NYU, before receiving her MFA from ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena, California. She has taught in the Graduate Art Program at ArtCenter for 30 years and is currently chair of the Art Department.