Deborah Stratman

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Deborah Stratman (born 1967) is a Chicago-based artist and filmmaker who works across film, public sculpture, photography, drawing and sound. Her work explores landscapes, systems and the human struggles for power, often blending documentary approaches with staging and re-enactment. She typically directs, shoots, edits and designs the sound for her pieces, inviting careful and open readings of complex questions.

Stratman earned an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts in 1995 and a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1990. She is an Associate Professor in the School of Art & Art History at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her films have been shown widely in museums and film festivals around the world, and she has received numerous prestigious fellowships—including USA (2015), the Herb Alpert Award in the Arts (2014), Creative Capital (2012), the Guggenheim Fellowship (2003), and a Fulbright (1995–96).

Notable works and projects include Tactical Uses of a Belief in the Unseen (2010), an installation inspired by urban crowd-control strategies linked to CIA audio tactics during the Vietnam era; Ball and Horns (Desert Resonator and Range Trumpet) (2011–ongoing), a collaboration with Steven Badgett installed at the Center for Land Use Interpretation’s Desert Research Station; and FEAR (Decade) (2004–2014), which collected public fears via a toll-free hotline and aired them on radio. She collaborated with Olivia Block on Second Sighted (2014) for the Chicago Film Archives. In film, she contributed camera work to Los Angeles Plays Itself (2003) and Get Out of the Car (2010). Her work has earned festival awards, including a Special Jury Prize for Ray’s Birds at the Ann Arbor Film Festival (2011), the New Vision Award at CPH:DOX for O’er the Land (2009), the Ken Burns Award for Best of the Festival at Ann Arbor (2009) for O’er the Land, and Best International On Screen at the Images Festival (2009) for O’er the Land.