Biography

Laitala grew up on the Maine coast, while developing a chronic passion for old things. Kerry Laitala is an award-winning moving-image artist who uses analog, digital, and hybrid forms to investigate the ways in which media influences past and present culture. She considers this type of approach to making art a type of media archeology. Laitala's work resides at the crossroads of science, history, and technology, and her uncanny approach to evolving systems of belief manifests through an array of media including films, videos, installations, photographic works, performances and kinetic sculpture. She studied Photography and Film at Massachusetts College of Art and received her Masters degree in Film from the San Francisco Art Institute. Laitala’s City Luminous Series encompasses nine moving image works, spanning the realms of installation, multi-projector performance, and single-channel film, shown thus far at the Palace of Fine Arts, the San Francisco Art Institute, the California Historical Society, and in solo shows at Oddball Films and Shapeshifters Cinema. These works explore the history of light shows which, many believe, first came into being at the Panama Pacific International Exhibition in 1915. Elements of The City Luminous series have been funded by a Special Projects Grant from the Princess Grace Foundation, San Francisco Arts Commission Grant, Yerba Buena Benefit District grant, California Historical Society,, Maybeck Foundation and Maurice Kanbar.

Laitala has had solo screenings at the Cinematheque Francaise, European Media Arts Festival, Engage Film Festival, The Lausanne Underground Film Festival, among others. She has created installations for the Berkeley Art Museum, SOMArts Gallery, The Manchester Art Center, San Francisco Art Institute, Edinburgh Institute of Art and the Akademie Schloss Solitude.

Laitala has won two Golden Gate Awards from the San Francisco International Film Festival, was awarded the Princess Grace Award for film in 1996 and PGF’s Special Grant in 2004, 2007, 2015 and 2016.