Claudia Esslinger is a visual artist who creates media-based installations that often invite interactivity by using micro-controllers and sculptural components. Her single and multi-channel video projections include those appropriate for gallery exhibitions, film festivals or as components for music or dance performances. In this varied practice, she often collaborates with dancers, musicians, scientists and writers. A common thematic thread through her projects is a poetic exploration of inequities and inconsistencies in both the human and natural worlds. By juxtaposing challenging and ironic elements within provocative aesthetic forms, she opens her work to a wide range of interpretation.
Esslinger has been the recipient of seven Ohio Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowships and a New Forms Regional Grant (NEA). Artist residencies include the Omora Ethnobotanical Preserve (2009), Headlands Center for the Arts in Sausalito, CA (2007), Singing Pictures workshop in Seoul, South Korea (2000) and the Grafikwerkstaadt in Dresden, Germany (1999). Her work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally, in a variety of galleries and film festivals. Recently her collaborative work (with Tom Giblin) was part of the Currents New Media Festival (2016) in New Mexico.
Claudia Esslinger has taught at Kenyon College since 1984, first as a printmaker and then transitioning into video art, digital imaging, new media and installation. She brings these interests to her classes in the Rome Program, with an emphasis on experimental media.