ABOUT

STEFANI BYRD (b. 1984, United States, she / they)

Stefani Byrd is an American experimental media artist working in video, new media, and interactive technologies whose work sits at the intersection of immersive media, labor history, and feminist critique. Her early work centered on social justice issues in the form of interactive temporary public art installations that created role reversal, or "empathy training,” experiences for the audience. Her current work focuses on creating psychologically charged immersive media environments that examine topics such as digital feminism, gun violence, and how technology impacts empathy in digitally mediated spaces. Across their practice, Byrd interrogates how imbalanced power structures persist in networked culture, shaping communication and emotional fluency. Her work frequently challenges these systems by unsettling established power dynamics and reconfiguring how visibility, authority, and agency are distributed.

Her work has been exhibited at places such as the OBLIQUO Gallery (Madrid, Spain), Czong Institute for Contemporary Art (South Korea), SONIC MATTER New Music Festival (Zurich), Museum of Contemporary Art of Alicante (Spain), Athens Digital Arts Festival (Greece), the Museum of Contemporary Art of San Diego (San Diego), the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia (Atlanta), San Luis Obispo Museum of Art (San Luis Obispo), and A.I.R. Gallery (Brooklyn). Byrd’s work is held in the permanent collections of the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia and the Columbus Museum of American Art.

In 2015, she trained in the Abramovic Method of Performance with Marina Abramovic. They hold Level I Certification in Pauline Oliveros’ method of Deep Listening through the Center for Deep Listening at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. They have received grants and support from groups such as: Creative Capital of New York, Flux Projects, the InLight Richmond Festival, Atlanta Celebrates Photography, Filmatic Festival, IDEA Festival, and Idea Capital. Her work has been reviewed and featured in such places as the Public Art Review Magazine, Public Art Archive, Huffington Post, Atlanta Journal Constitution, New Media Caucus, and Art Papers Magazine.

She received a Master of Fine Arts in Visual Art from the University of California San Diego and holds a BFA degree in Photography from Georgia State University. Byrd is currently Assistant Professor of Experimental Media in the Film Studies Department at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. She previously served as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Experimental Media Art at the University of Arkansas. Byrd is also a former Lecturer in the Digital Arts division of the Claire Trevor School of the Arts at the University of California Irvine and the Interdisciplinary Computing and the Arts (ICAM) major in the Visual Arts department at the University of California San Diego.

Byrd is the Founding Director of the Intersectional Feminist Media Lab embedded in the University of North Carolina Wilmington’s Film Studies Department. The lab is dedicated to equitable access, training, education, awareness, and representation for marginalized identities and voices in media.