BIO


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Mary Billyou is a lens-based artist who examines the archive, interpellation, and social practice. Her films have screened at venues including: Ambulante, Antimatter, CROSSROADS, Film Mutations, Images Festival, The New Museum, Spectacle, Sundance, and White Box Gallery. Billyou’s work has been noted in publications including Artforum, Artnet, Octopus Journal, and The New York Times. She is the recipient of awards from The New York Foundation for the Arts, The New York State Council for the Arts, The Jerome Foundation and The Black Maria Film Festival. Her films are held at The Getty Institute, Video Data Bank, and The Film Coop. In addition to cinema screenings, Billyou’s work has been installed at Art in General, Rotunda Gallery, and A.I.R. Gallery. Billyou received her MFA in Film, Video, and New Media from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and attended The Whitney Independent Study Program in 2004. 

Complementing her studio work, Billyou has documented durational performances for the artists Pope.L, Robin Rhode, Martha Rosler, and Anne Wilson. She programs screenings, including Satellite Cinema: Children’s Program, We Are What We Archive, and Women’s Punk Art Making Party. She  has written for The Brooklyn Rail, Screen Slate, and Afterimage: The Journal for Media Arts and Cultural Criticism.



Filmmaker’s Coop
Video Data Bank
Getty Institute
CV                Born 1969, Hartford, CT
                  Lives & works in Ridgewood, NY





Education
2024 – present Queens College, CUNY. M.L.S./M.A. in History
Rare Book School

2004 The Whitney Independent Study Program, NY, NY

2003 The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL. M.F.A. Film, Video & New Media Graduate Colloquium Speaker

1991 The University of Rochester, Rochester, NY. B.A. Art History Graduated with Distinction Nominated for NEH Award in Film Studies

1990 MATRIX Art Gallery Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, CT 
Internship




Solo Exhibitions Microcinema: Films of Mary Billyou, RhizomeDC
2019

Why Sing When Nobody Hears? Films by Mary Billyou, Microscope Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
2017




Select Group ExhibitionsRumor Has It, marytwo, Lucerne, Switzerland (upcoming)
Empty Arms, invitation by Suzanne Goldenberg, Umbrella House, NYC
Seeing the Big Picture, invitation by Sara Sowell, Milton Avery School for the Arts, Princeton University, NJ
Carry & Transform, Ridgewood Open Studios
Lorimoto Gallery, Ridgewood Open Studios
2025

Cauldron Film Fest, Salt Lake City, UT
What Next, Wide Open Experimental Film Festival, Oklahoma City, OK
Blind Date, Ridgewood Open Studios
2024

Film Party, Celluloid Now, Chicago Film Society, Chicago, IL
2023

Women’s Punk Art Making Parties,
Spectacle Theater, Brooklyn, NY
Antimatter, Vancouver, Canada
Winter Windows, Supermoon Community Art Space, Ridgewood, NY
2021

Injerto 2019: Rituals, Ambulante Itinerant Film Festival, Mexico
2019 

Joanie 4 Jackie 4 Ever, Fotofocus Biennial, The Mini Microcinema, Cincinnati, OH
Diverging Forms, Maryland Film Festival
Are You Tired of Forever? Cosmic Rays, Chapel Hill, NC
2018 

a great unknown called trust, CROSSROADS, SFMoMA, San Francisco, CA
Experimental Superstars, Novi Sad, Serbia
2017 

Grrrl Germs: A Visual History of Riot Grrrl, Spectacle Theater, Brooklyn, NY
The 27th Onion City Experimental Film Festival, Chicago, IL
The Short Circuit, Brighton, U.K.
2016 

Live in the Layers, Not on the Litter, other projects, Ashley Berlin, Germany
2015 




Select Awards
Arts Access Grant, Queens Art Fund, New York Foundation for the Arts
2024 

Finishing Funds, New York State Council for the Arts
2012 

Presentation Funds, New York State Council for the Arts 
2011 

Filmmaking Grant, The Jerome Foundation
2009 

Finishing Funds, Experimental Television Center
2006 




Select Press
Kley, Elisabeth, “Gotham Art and Theater,” Elisabeth Kley, Artnet.
2010 

Pearce, Daniel, “Ecsatic at St. Cecelia’s,” Idiom.
2010 

Anderson, Melissa, “Pie with Dignity,” Artforum.com.
2009 

Cotter, Holland, “Art in Review: Spectral Evidence,” The New York Times.
2007 




Select PublicationsHysteria: Past Yet Present, exhibition catalogue, Paul Robeson Gallery.
2009 

Inherent Vice: Bootleg Histories of Videotape and Copyright, Lucas Hildebrand, Duke University Press.
2009 

“Breach Birth: The Hygiene of Screen Skins,” A. Lee Laskin, Octopus Journal, vol 4: Surface, University of California, Irvine.
2008 




Collections
Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, CA

Video Data Bank, Chicago, IL 

Filmmaker’s Cooperative, New York, NY









Last Updated 24.10.31
SELECTED WORK







1. Screening the Big Picture with Sara Sowell
organized by Christopher Harris 
Milton Avery School for the Arts 
April 2025   
GUN, HAT, GIRL, 2016
9 mins, sound, 16mm 





2. Screening the Big Picture with Sara Sowell
organized by Christopher Harris
Milton Avery School for the Arts
April 2025
   
GUN, HAT, GIRL, 2016
9 mins, sound, 16mm 





3. GUN, 2016, still
    



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4. GIRL, 2016, still.





5. HAT, 2016, still





6. Over We Go, 2023.
Mary Billyou
7 mins., sound, digital video

Aerial views of ancient amphitheaters and craters, views of eroding landscapes on which silhouettes of furniture are placed, layered with geometric patterns. This film attempts to hold space in a changing world so that we may witness it.





7. Seneca Stop, 2024.
Mary Billyou
b & w inkjet print on hannemuhle paper
Ridgewood, NY





8. Caught Caption, 2023.
Mary Billyou
2 mins., sound, digital video

A durational image, overheard phrase and found sound. Part of a series referencing television advertising.





                               9. Demonstration, 2017.

    
4 mins., sound, digital video


Self-defense techniques demonstrated and repeated to a slow-mo pace of Billy Joel's Just the Way You Are.                                           
                                                                                                           

                                                       
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