Hannah Subotnick

Hannah Subotnick (b.1992) explores animation as a method of making and as a state of being. Her interest in what she terms “aliveness” transformed a childhood fascination with wildlife rehabilitation into explorations of animation, filmmaking, photography, movement, sound, and object-making. In her work, boundaries between living and dead, and animate and inanimate are blurred. 

Subotnick has received numerous fellowships and residencies: a Fulbright Research Fellowship to the Netherlands in 2024–25 and a residency at Yaddo in 2017, among others. Her work has been supported by grants from the Rhode Island State Council for the Arts, Rhode Island School of Design, Stanford University, and Brown University. Her films have been screened internationally at animation and experimental film festivals including the Holland Animation Film Festival (Utrecht, the Netherlands), the Melbourne International Animation Festival (Melbourne, Australia), Les Sommets du cinéma d’animation (Montréal, Canada), Anibar Animation Festival (Peja, Kosovo), Alchemy Film Festival (Hawick, Scotland), Screen Dance Film Festival (Stockholm, Sweden), Locomocion/Experimental Animation Festival (Mexico City, Mexico), among others. 

She received her MFA in Art Practice from Stanford University (2020), her BFA in Film/Animation/Video from Rhode Island School of Design (2016), and a BA in Modern Culture and Media from Brown University (2016).

Hannah has taught at Colby College, where she was a visiting assistant professor of art; at Rhode Island School of Design as a critic in FAV; at the University of Rhode Island as an instructor in Video & Multimedia; and at Stanford University as an instructor in Art and Art History.