The Artist Profile Archive is an ever-expanding archive of short documentaries on contemporary artists. The videos profile artists in their own words and include multi-media content featuring biographies, exhibition photos, audio clips and behind-the-scenes images. They provide educational information and an historical record of some of the most important contemporary artists working today.
Artists are interviewed in their studios when possible, and speak extemporaneously about their educational background, sources of inspiration, and their artistic process, contextualizing their exhibitions in galleries or museums within the larger body of their work. These intimate portraits allow the audience to make a personal connection to artists, promoting a more textured understanding of their work.
Being able to see and hear an artist speak directly about his or her work gives unmediated information that is more immediate and visceral than reading secondary source material. This makes The Artist Profile Archive a perfect online destination for anyone seeking an introduction to an artist’s work. From information learned through diverse media, collectors, art professionals, students and other artists can quickly learn about a given artist and determine how best to narrow or expand their research accordingly.
The Artist Profile Archive also offers one-stop film production services to artists, museums and galleries.
Founder Sophie Chahinian works with many talented production teammates in the US and abroad, including directors of photography, music composers, editors, camera operators, production assistants and still photographers. Her most consistent collaborator is fellow filmmaker and friend, Matt Hindra, who, like Sophie, is based in East Hampton, NY.
SOPHIE CHAHINIAN
“Our mission is to create a visual, archival record of contemporary art practice by producing video-first, mixed media profiles of artists. Short documentaries highlight each artist speaking in an unmediated way about their artistic process and background. The resulting archive of short artist profiles promotes artists and art education in the academic and art worlds, as well as online.”
The founding producer and director of The Artist Profile Archive, Sophie Chahinian, a Los Angeles native, earned a B.A. in Philosophy from Occidental College. She became involved with independent film production as both a producer and actor before she began working for Light and Space artist Eric Orr in the late 1990s. In her capacity as his studio manager, she interacted with many other Southern California artists such as Ed Moses, Larry Bell, and Robert Irwin. Wanting a more formal education in the field, she moved to England and earned an M.A. in Contemporary Art from the University of Manchester through Sotheby’s Institute of Art London.
During her studies she read many insightful, academic texts, prompting her to reflect upon her own experience of listening to artists in their own voices, providing an incomparable personal perspective. It was then that she decided to start The Artist Profile Archive as a platform for primary information, allowing artists the opportunity to talk about their own work, in their own words. Her film experience and her formal education in contemporary art proved an effective combination for interviewing artists in their own environments, talking extemporaneously about their work, from which she creates intimate video portraits made up exclusively of the artist speaking and footage of the artist’s work.
Sophie’s hope is that by sharing these films of working artists discussing their personal backgrounds, creative challenges, sources of inspiration and artistic practices, more people will become engaged with contemporary art and realize its capacity to unite people by identifying the commonality of the human experience.
MATT HINDRA
Matthew Hindra is a filmmaker, director of photography, editor and producer based in East Hampton, New York with over 20 years of experience in commercial video production. Matthew attended Marist College in Poughkeepsie, NY studying TV/Film/Radio Production and began his career as a cameraman for New York 1 News.
Matt has been working with The Artist Profile Archive since 2013 when he filmed and edited the Chuck Close profile. Since then he has collaborated with Sophie on a multitude of profiles as well as shot on location and edited The Making of Shirin Neshat’s Land of Dreams which first screened at The Broad Museum in Los Angeles in 2019.