Danielle Abrams is an interdisciplinary artist who works in performance and video. Family and social histories are the material Abrams kneads to create contemporary moments about people, communities, and eras. She utilizes the tropes of personae to inquire about social relationships and cultures. Abrams challenges our reliance upon origin and biography through embodying characters of multi-gendered and cross-cultural kin. In Abrams’ performances, she reveals the frolic, toxicity, poignancy, and revolutionary potential that become created at the intersections between diverse communities.
Danielle Abrams has performed and exhibited videos at art spaces, galleries, festivals, and museums including the Detroit Institute of Arts, The Jewish Museum (NY), Bronx Museum of the Arts, Queens Museum of Art, Art Gallery of Windsor (ONT), The Kitchen, WOW CafeTheater, Dixon Place, Rush Arts Gallery, Harvestworks Digital Media Arts Center, ABC No Rio, Brooklyn Arts Exchange, Bronx River Art Center, Links Hall (Chicago), and the Intervene! Interrupt! Conference. She is the former director of the San Francisco performance space BUILD (Performance. Art. Objects.). Abrams has been awarded grants and residencies from the Franklin Furnace Fund for Performance Art, New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA), Urban Artist Initiative, Congregation Beth Simchat Torah, Skowhegan School of Art, and Yale School of Painting. She has lectured at The Cooper Union for the Creative Time Summit: “Revolutions in Public Practiceâ€, Portland State University for the “Open Engagement Conference, the University of Wisconsin for “The Conney Project’s Annual Conference on Jewish Artsâ€, and Northwestern University’s Graduate Program in Performance Studies. Danielle Abrams currently teaches at the MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts Program at Goddard College.